


Beautiful Stranger

by angelsfalling16



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Simon is suspicious of Baz, SnowBaz, Strangers to Lovers, i'll warn for it in the chapter notes, like always, things do get intimate at one point
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-01-06 08:44:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18384974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelsfalling16/pseuds/angelsfalling16
Summary: Simon's car breaks down during a storm, and he gets stranded in the middle of nowhere. Deciding to seek shelter, he comes across a large, seemingly abandoned house. It isn't abandoned, though, and he is almost certain that the boy inside is a vampire, planning to kill him.





	1. If I'm Smart Then I'll Run Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magicspills](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicspills/gifts).



> A (late) birthday present for @magickspills on Tumblr <3
> 
> Technically, this fic was inspired by a Tumblr post, but as you will see, I have strayed from that somewhat. This fic is teen rated for the most part, except when we get to the last chapter where it will be a bit more mature, but it is not explicit.  
> (Here's the post: https://im-falling-save-me.tumblr.com/post/183600728941/my-life-is-missing-a-homoerotic-scene-where-i-come )
> 
> The chapter title comes from Madonna's Beautiful Stranger. Thanks to my lovely beta, @wo2ash on Tumblr, for the idea.

**Simon**

I’m covered in mud almost up to my knees, and water is rolling off of me. I’ve been walking down this long expanse of road for what feels like hours through a thunderstorm, and there is no end in sight. Not that I would be able to see it if there was.

The unrelenting rain keeps me from seeing much of anything. The clouds have long since blocked out the sun, taking the warmth of the day with it. My outfit is not ideal for the weather either. It consists of a white t-shirt–now completely see-through from the rain–cuffed jeans and an old pair of tennis shoes with holes growing in the toes of them that I should have thrown out long ago but could never bring myself to do because they’re my favorite pair, and I can’t afford to buy new ones, even with my job and work study. I can barely afford to live on campus and pay for my classes, so shoes weren’t at the top of my list. I’m beginning to regret my choice to wait on that now.

I had been hoping to be safely inside before the storm hit, but I was unfortunately not that lucky.

The storm had been a light rain when I began this walk. I was hoping to find a dry place to wait it out, but I keep passing empty field after empty field. The grass around me is overgrown, and the road is more gravel than pavement. Water is pooling in the ditch between me and the fields. When the rain hit, it hit hard, and it doesn’t appear to be about to let up anytime soon.

I shouldn’t even be out here. I was supposed to be meeting some friends. I got invited out to some party at someone’s house that I’ve never been to. This was supposed to be a shortcut to their house, but then my car ran out of gas or something. It broke down, leaving me stranded in the middle of the nowhere, so I pushed it off to the side of the road and started walking, thinking that I would eventually find a house or another car, any sign of civilization, something that would be helpful to me.

Apparently, I was wrong.

I can barely see now as the clouds effectively block out the sun, which had just begun its descent towards the horizon when I set off down the road, and the rain is so heavy that I can barely see a foot in front of me. No amount of pushing will get my hair out of my face either. It’s not even that long but wet, it’s long enough to be in the way.

I turn to look behind me, hoping that a car will approach, but there’s nothing except rain and darkness. I can’t even see my own car down the road. Maybe I should turn back. Wait in my car until the rain lets up. But I’ve already walked this far, so it seems like a waste to just turn back until I at least figure out where this road leads. I’m hoping that it intersects with a busier road, one that will have cars driving on it, so that I can find someone to help me.

I keep walking, taking a few more steps, dodging a puddle in the road but stepping into a large area of mud, slipping in it and just barely managing to keep my footing. I stop for a second to regain my balance, looking around me once more.

That’s when I see it. It’s large, towering over everything else, including the woods that sit a ways behind it. It’s the only building in sight for miles, and it looks like more of a castle really. I step off of the road and head towards it. It’s most likely abandoned, but at least it will be somewhere dry to stay until the rain lets up. Then, I can start walking again and look for some place where I can get cell service, which I lost almost as soon as I turned onto this road.

I have no idea where I am, but I’m almost certain that I never want to return.

I step off the road and onto the dirt path that leads up to the house. The house is big, three stories tall, and has a large porch that wraps around the right side of the house. It’s hard to see too much detail in the dark, but as lightning strikes, it lights up the tower up at the left side of the house; it looks something like what Rapunzel would have thrown her hair down, creepy and dark, a large spike sticking up out of it. I’m sure there’s a name for that point, but all I can think of is someone being impaled upon it.

I let my eyes travel back down the house, past the balcony on the second floor, to the large bay window to the left of the porch at the front of the house. The curtains have been drawn shut, but it looks like it would be a nice place to sit and read on this rainy, spring day. If only it didn’t look so empty and foreboding.

The place screams haunted house but also looks like it might have once been a very nice place to call home. It makes me wonder about the history of the place. Who lived there? And what happened to them? Because from the outside, it looks abandoned, like no one has lived here in years.

The grass is overgrown, and the dirt path that I’m traveling has been taken over by weeds. As I near the house, almost to the steps now, I notice that the walls of the house, when lit by lightning, don’t look as uncared for as the front lawn. It’s like the house is at once well-cared for but also completely abandoned.

I wonder if I should turn away. This house may not be so welcoming to strangers. My only other option is to go back and sit in my car, where the temperature is dropping by the minute, and I’m already here, so I might as well wait until the rain lets up a bit.

With a sigh, I walk down the path towards the black, wrought-iron gate that lines the edge of the property. Almost as soon as I touch the top of the gate, it swings open, as if it has a mind of its own. I tell myself that it was probably just the wind, that it probably wasn’t latched properly, but I’m almost certain that it was.

_Magic_ , my brain suggests, but I push that thought aside. There is no such thing as magic. The gate is just old.

As I step through the gate, my foot kicks something, and when I look down, I see a padlock that I vaguely remember seeing on the gate from the road. It wasn’t there a moment ago, though. There’s definitely something strange going on here.

I should turn back. I should wait in my car. I shouldn’t keep walking. I shouldn’t ignore all the signs that are screaming at me to leave.

While my mind is telling me to turn around and leave, I feel something much stronger pulling me forward, towards the large house, almost castle-like, in front of me. It’s like I’m being reeled in, and I’m helpless to fight it. I’ve been caught on a hook, and all I can do is wait to see whether I’ll be released again.

There’s a flash of lightning followed by a loud crack of thunder only a few seconds later, and my decision is made for me. I have to get out of the storm.

I don’t hear the gate swing shut by itself behind me over the next rumble of thunder. If I had, maybe I would have been freaked out and turned back. Maybe I wouldn’t have walked up to the door. Maybe.

When I climb the steps and walk across the porch, it creaks beneath my feet with almost every step. I’m afraid that if I put too much weight on it, it will collapse underneath me even though it doesn’t look rotted exactly, almost like it’s been well taken care of over the years, just like the shingled walls.

I glance at one of the windows as I near the door, and there seems to be light coming from inside. Maybe this place isn’t as abandoned as it first looked from out by the gate.

I guess I should knock instead of just trying the door knob. I notice a door knocker, but it looks like it might come to life and bite me if I touch it, so I opt for the doorbell instead.

I wait for a couple of long moments, starting to shiver as the wind slices through my wet clothes. No one comes to the door, and I start to think that no one is home. If that’s true, then why are there lights on inside? I push the button again, shifting my weight from foot to foot, trying to get warm.

When the door finally opens, the sight that greets me is unexpected. The person who opens the door looks to be about my age, a college student, and just as surprised to see me here as I am to see his appearance.

I open and close my mouth a few times, but no words come out. I don’t know how to describe the guy. He is indescribably stunning. And he’s glaring daggers at me. Of course. That’s just my luck. I find a place to stay dry, but the guy inside instantly hates me.

I should just turn and leave, get out of here before anything bad can happen to me, but something is still drawing me towards this house. I wonder if it’s the boy standing in front of me, with the mysterious grey eyes, as dark as the clouds overhead, and hair that is black as the night, slicked away from his face. I wonder if he might be doing something to draw me in. Maybe he’s luring me in to kill me, and I’m walking right into his trap.


	2. But I'm Not So I Guess I'll Stay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon wakes up in a strange place, and he's very suspicious of the boy standing over him.

The guy at the door is holding one of those old-fashioned candle holders with the handle, and the flame of the candle casts eerie shadows across his face. He opened the door, and neither of us has spoken. I guess that ball is in my court since I’m the one who showed up on his porch and rang his doorbell, but I seem to have forgotten how to speak.

He’s still glaring at me, and he looks like he is about two seconds away from slamming the door in my face. His sour expression isn’t what has caused me to become suddenly unable to speak, though. No, that would be thanks to the clothes that he is wearing.

He’s rather dressed up for someone who is all alone. (Is he alone? I wonder. Maybe there’s someone else inside.) If I was in a house in the middle of nowhere, I wouldn’t be wearing clothes like the ones that he is. He looks as though he is ready to go out to some kind of costume party, where you’re meant to dress like people did a long time ago.

I have to admit that he pulls the look off rather well.

He is wearing a white ruffled shirt that looks just as see through as mine currently is even though his shirt is dry. The ruffles cascade from his collar and down to where his shirt disappears inside of his black pants, a stark contrast to the white of his shirt. The first couple of buttons are undone, showing off the smooth planes of his chest, and it takes some effort to pull my eyes away from that expanse of olive-toned skin, that looks like it would be smooth as silk if I were to reach out and run my fingers across it.

Of course, my eyes then fall on his pants or more accurately, the way that his legs look in them. Where his shirt is puffy and airy, his pants are tight. They cling to his legs in a way that seems impossible; there’s no way that he could possibly get those off without someone to help him cut them off. It’s almost as if they were painted on.

I finally drag my eyes away from his body when he clears his throat, my face flushing from getting caught staring at him.

Something changes then. I’m not sure what exactly happens next. One moment, I’m staring into piercing grey eyes, and the next I’m falling. I wait for the pain of hitting the ground, but that doesn’t come. Instead, I’m being held up by a pair of strong arms. The strange guy must have caught me. I can’t seem to open my eyes to check, though. I can only hope that the candle has been dropped and that he isn’t about to catch me on fire with it.

“Let’s get you inside,” I think I hear him say in a voice that is much gentler that I ever would have thought that this guy would use, if his expression was anything to go by. “We’ll get you dry and warm. Then, we’ll figure out what to do with you.”

Do with me? What does that mean? The question slips away, though, as I fall into unconsciousness.

***

When I come to again, I’m stretched out on a dark leather couch in a dark room, lit by the flickering candles that sit in sconces, which hang every few feet along the walls. I sit up and look around blearily. I’m not sure where I am, or how I got here.

“Oh, good. You’re up.”

And now there is a vaguely familiar stranger standing over me, a light frown marring his elegant features.

“Where am I?” I ask him.

“Don’t you remember?”

“Did you kidnap me?”

“No. Why on earth would you think that?”

I think about it for a moment. I have no idea where I am. I’ve never seen this place before, and I don’t remember coming here. The only reason that I can come up with for this is that I’ve been kidnapped. I glare at the guy standing over me and refuse to say anything.

“I’m pretty sure that I caught you before you could hit your head, so you shouldn’t be having any memory loss. Did something happen before you got here?” His brows are crinkled in thought.

“Caught me…?” Why would he have caught me? I think about it, trying to remember where I was before this, and it slowly starts to come back to me.

My car coming to a stuttering stop. It refusing to start again. The rain pouring down harder, as if it was mocking me. Getting out of car and hoping that there will be a place nearby, some place I could take shelter from the storm. Seeing a house in the distance and being glad to find someplace dry to sit for a while. Then finding out that the house is occupied and being stunned by its beautiful occupant, so much so that I fainted into his arms.

“Oh,” I say faintly. “I remember now.”

“Good,” he says with a curt nod.

The boy is standing with his arms behind his back, his stiff posture causing him to tower ominously over where I’m seated on the couch. I consider standing up so that I won’t feel so small, but I’m worried that I might still be a bit faint, and I don’t fancy falling in front of him twice. He might not feel inclined to catch me twice.

“Now do you care to tell me why you’re dripping water onto my leather couch?”

“You put me here?”

He sighs, sounding annoyed. “But why are you at my house?”

“My car broke down. I was looking for someplace dry to stay.”

“Why did you faint?” He doesn’t sound worried like he did a minute ago when he thought that I was having memory problems. He seems more annoyed by the fact that he’s going to have to deal with me now. He should have just let me fall on his porch and left me there if this is how he’s going to treat me.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “How long have I been out?”

“Only a couple of minutes. I was just about to go find you some dry clothes.”

“You were going to change my clothes while I was unconscious?”

His face burns red. “Wha—? No. I would never do that.” His expression changes so fast, it nearly gives me whiplash from flustered innocence to a darker, smirkier look. “Besides, if I wanted you to take your clothes off, there are much easier ways to go about making that happen.”

My mouth drops open at his forwardness. A few ideas about what would happen to get my clothes off flash through my mind, and I can’t find the words inside of me to speak. He takes the opportunity to change the subject, and I realize that he was obviously just joking about getting me naked. I’m not sure how that makes me feel or why my stomach is doing fluttery flips at the thought.

“I made some tea to help you warm up.”

“Oh,” I say dumbly, still unable to think clearly and trying to figure out how he managed to transition from talking about getting me naked to making me tea so quickly, as if it were nothing.

“We can go get you into some dry clothes first if you want.”

I shake my head. “Tea is fine.”

“Great. Follow me.” He turns on his heel and begins to walk out of the room, and I scramble to follow after him, my wet clothes causing me to slip a bit on the couch. Luckily, I find that I’m steadier on my feet than I thought I would be.

As the boy in front of me moves from the carpeted living room to the tiled floor of the kitchen, there is a clicking sound with every step that he makes. That’s when I notice the shoes that he’s wearing. The boots come up to just below his knees, and they’re laced all the way up the back. The most interesting part about them is the two-inch heel that causes him to tower over me.

He walks in them without fault, and I imagine now that they’re something he wears quite often, not that they’re part of some costume. This is really how he likes to dress. I admire his courage to wear them and almost wish that I had a pair of my own and maybe that I wasn’t wearing the rattiest pair of shoes that I own. Only, I don’t think that I would look half as good in them as the boy in front of me.

“What’s your name?” I ask, unable to contain my curiosity about the boy any longer. Who is he, and why does he live in the middle of nowhere?

“Baz. What’s yours?”

I hesitate a moment. Should I really be telling a stranger my name? Probably not.

“Snow,” I tell him.

“Hmm. Interesting.”

I’m not sure what that means or why it would be all that interesting.

“You live here alone?” I ask.

“I’m the only one here,” he confirms, albeit in a strange way.

I don’t push it, though, because I have plenty of other questions to ask as he goes about pulling cups down and stirring in cream and sugar, without asking me how I take it.

“Why are you out here all alone?”

“Why are _you_ out here all alone?” The boy – Baz – replies, throwing the question back at me. “This is my house, so what’s your excuse?”

“I told you. My car broke down.”

“What were you doing driving way out here? The only people who come this way are the ones who live out here.”

“I was taking a shortcut to a friend’s house, but I got lost.”

“Some shortcut. This is way out of the way of pretty much everything.”

“I must have taken a wrong turn,” I murmur. I’m still not sure how it happened. I’ve never been out this far, and as far as I was concerned, this place didn’t even exist.

“Must have,” he repeats under his breath.

I stop asking questions then, choosing to silently observe the house around me instead.

The house is strangely clean, not as dusty as I was expecting it to be. Nothing, it seems, is what I expected it to be. It definitely doesn’t look as abandoned as I thought it was when I was outside.

We stand there as I stare into my cup, only just now wondering whether it’s possible that he would have poisoned it. You’re not supposed to accept drinks from strange men, yet, here I am drinking some tea when I haven’t got a clue what’s in it.

That doesn’t stop me from finishing it off and accepting more when it’s offered to me. It’s just the way I like it, extra sugar and lots of cream. It’s nice, warming me up from the inside, making me realize how cold I am in my still-wet clothes.

I shiver, and he must take notice because he asks me if I want to go change. I set my cup down carefully on the counter and nod at him in quiet confirmation.

I move to follow him out of the kitchen when I notice a door that has been padlocked shut. I shouldn’t ask him about; I should just keep my mouth shut, but my curiosity gets the better of me.

“What’s behind that door?” I ask, and he turns to look at where I’m pointing.

“Nothing.” He says it quickly, defensively. It’s obviously a lie.

“Can I see the nothing?”

“No. You can’t go down there,” he sneers, stepping to block my view.

“Why not?”

“It’s just the cellar,” he says before turning back around and beginning to walk again, not even bothering to check whether I’m following him. I guess he doesn’t care what I do.

Strange. If it’s just the cellar, why doesn’t he want me to go down there. I bet it’s a sex dungeon. Or a torture dungeon. He’s probably planning on dragging me down there, tying me up, and having his way with me.

I don’t want to stick around long enough to find out what he would do to me if I let him tie me up. I turn around, hoping to get out of there before he even notices that I’m no longer behind him.

I walk quickly back the way we came, and just as I reach the door, hand on the knob, pulling it open, a voice calls out from behind me, quiet but powerful, managing to be heard over the sound of the pouring rain.

“You can run, but you won’t get far.” His voice sends shivers down my spine, in a not unpleasant way.

“What?” I turn to look at him, too surprised by his words to keep going.

He’s closer to me than I thought, barely a foot away. How did he move so fast?

_Vampire_ , a voice in my head whispers, but I ignore it. Vampires aren’t real. Although, it would make sense for why he’s out here in the middle of nowhere, all of the curtains drawn shut, and has a cellar that I can’t go down into. I bet that’s where he keeps the bodies of all the things that he sucked dry.

He reaches for me, but I jerk away.

“You can’t keep me here,” I tell him.

“I won’t keep you here against your will.”

“Then, why can’t I leave?”

“The rain.” He says it like that’s enough an explanation. When I just stare at him dumbly, he sighs and explains it to me slowly, as if I’m a rather dim child that he is being forced to put up with. “It’s a flash flood. You said your car broke down, so that won’t run. And look. We’re in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by woods. So, I repeat, you won’t get far.”

I stand there, turning to look out at the rain, longing to be anywhere but here. He’s right, though. The ditch at the side of the road has already filled and begun overflowing into the roads. It wouldn’t be safe to drive in, and I don’t fancy walking in it anymore.

With a sigh, I step back and let him push the door shut. He latches the lock, and I swallow audibly, feeling like he’s locking me in.

“Don’t worry, love,” he says in a husky voice, too close to my ear, in a way that causes me to have to suppress another shiver that isn’t from the cold. “You can still leave whenever you want. Now, dry clothes?”

I just stare at him, and he sighs, rolling his eyes.

“I don’t bite,” he says with a strange smile. “Well, not unless you want me to.”

He’s a vampire. That has to be it. Why else would he want to bite me?

Maybe that’s why he lives out here in the middle of nowhere so that he can suck dry any unsuspecting strangers who happen to break down on this stretch of road.

I need to get out of here. Now.

Yet, I find myself once again following him through his house, almost like a willing victim.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @wo2ash for beta reading!! <3


	3. I've Had The Taste For Danger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon spends the night in the creepy house with the dark-haired stranger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Madonna's Beautiful Stranger
> 
> Thank you so much for beta reading @wo2ash!!! <3

The tall, dark stranger in front of me leads me down a barely-lit hall. The only sconces lit are the ones at each end, leaving the middle dark as pitch. The boy is still carrying the candle, but it only lights up the space just in front of him, giving him an eerie outline, so I am forced to walk close to him so as not to get lost or walk into one of the bare walls.

There are spaces where the walls are lighter in color, not quite the dark grey of the rest of it, and they’re shaped as if picture frames once hung there. I wonder what happened to them.

Vampires don’t show up in photographs, so what were they even of? Was his family not vampires before perhaps? They must have been photos of him before he was turned.

He leads me up the stairs, and above the second-floor landing, there is a sky light. I look up, expecting to be able to see the storm raging outside. The thing is, it’s been blocked out with paper and cardboard. Definitely strange.

Also, it’s another sign that he’s a vampire. If it wasn’t blocked out, the sun would be able to shine through and burn him.

I’m relieved when he doesn’t take me up to the third floor, because that means that he doesn’t plan to lock me up in the tower there. Not yet anyway.

He leads down an unlit hall to a room, which I assume is his bedroom. I stop just inside the door, not wanting to intrude on his space. He peers at me curiously when he notices, but he doesn’t say anything about it.

I watch him walk across the room, which is lit by a fireplace and numerous candles, over to a closet that appears to be at least twice the size of mine. He must have been up here when I arrived, which explains why it took him a while to get to the door.

He looks through the clothes inside before, appearing dissatisfied with what hangs there, he moves over to a wardrobe where he continues his search. I take that time to look around his room, taking it all in.

Heavy curtains hang in front of the window. They’re a velvet black, blocking out any light that might have been left in the day, and they drag onto the floor.

There is a dark red, cushioned couch situated in front of the fireplace. It would probably be a nice place to sit and soak up the warmth. It looks comfortable. I shake my head, unsure why I’m imagining what it would be like to sit in his room, on his couch, with or without him beside me.

“So, do you not have electricity here?” I ask him, both to fill the silence and to try to think about something else.

“I do, but the storm knocked it out not long before you got here.”

“Oh.” That makes sense, more sense than the the idea I had of him living out here with no power or plumbing. But he wouldn’t really need it if he was a vampire, so it was such a crazy idea.

I continue looking around. His bed is large and sits up on a slightly raised platform, with two floral-carpeted steps leading up to it, like it’s something to behold. Which it is. It’s massive, much too large for just one person. I’ve never seen a bed that big. I’m also mildly surprised to find that he doesn’t sleep in a coffin.

There are dark curtains that are pulled aside at the moment, but they’re obviously meant to provide further privacy. I don’t know why you’d need them when this place seems plenty private as it is. There is an absurd number of pillows on the bed, and I can’t even begin to imagine what he would need them all for. A book rests atop the neatly made bed. He must have set it there when he heard the doorbell.

A heavy-looking chest sits at the end of the bed, large enough to hold a body, and I make a mental note not to go anywhere near it. The walls of his room are an emerald color, making the room seem brighter.

Against one wall, near a curtained window, is a black vanity with an ornate mirror. On top of it sits various bottled products, one of which holds a thick, dark red liquid. It looks suspiciously like blood. There is also a tall, slender vase, holding fake black roses next to a cup of what looks like makeup brushes.

Before I can think about all of this for too long, the boy – Baz, I remind myself (which is very close to the word bat, like a vampire) – is standing in front of me, holding out a stack of clothes.

I take it from him, and my hand grazes his, sending a chill down my spine. He’s cold as ice, which must be because of the whole vampire thing. I don’t say anything about it as I look through the clothes, which consists of a black t-shirt, a pair of grey sweatpants, and a sweatshirt.

“So, you do own normal clothes,” I mutter.

“What was that?” He asks.

“Nothing,” I say, shaking my head. “Is there a bathroom that I can change in?”

“Yeah, it’s just down the hall. It will be dark, but you can take a shower if you want.”

“Thanks, but I think I’ll wait until the power comes back on.”

He nods and leads me out of his room and two doors down to the end of the hall. There’s already a candle lit in there, but it’s still dark.

“Just hang your clothes on the rack to dry. I’ll be out here, waiting for you.”

I shut myself in the bathroom, trying not to think about his presence just on the other side of the door as I strip down out of my wet clothes and step into his warm and dry ones.

The pants are a little long, but it feels nice to be wearing something dry. My hair is drier than before, curling again in a tangled mess atop my head, but there’s no fixing that. Taking a deep breath, I step out into the hall, and before either of us can say anything, my stomach growls, a loud noise in the otherwise silent house.

“Hungry?” One corner of his mouth turns up in the first imitation of a smile that I’ve seen on him since I arrived. It’s nice, and I wonder what it would like if he smiled for real. Something inside of me is dying to find out.

“A little,” I admit. I was going to eat at the party, but I never made it there, so now it feels like I’m starving.

“I don’t have much food here, but I can make you a sandwich.”

“That’d be great, but you don’t have to.”

“It’d be my pleasure,” he says in that low tone that affects me in ways that it shouldn’t.

***

Baz watches as I eat with a strange expression on his face. He doesn’t eat anything, saying that he’s already eaten, but I’m pretty sure it’s because he doesn’t need to eat real food. I wonder where he keeps his stash of blood because I’m sure that it isn’t easy for him to acquire it out here. (And I peeked inside the fridge when he was pulling out the food, and there wasn’t any blood in here. It’s probably down in the cellar.)

Neither of us speak as I eat, and it’s more comfortable than I thought it would be. I find that I don’t mind being in this strange guy’s presence, which should worry me since I’m still suspicious of him. He has to be up to something.

When I’m done eating, I try to help clean up, but he doesn’t let me, so I sit there admiring his outfit once again. It looks almost as good from the back as it does from the front, which is something that I won’t let myself think too hard about.

“There’s a spare bedroom upstairs that you can sleep in,” he says when he turns back to me.

“Okay.”

I’m not looking forward to sleeping in this creepy house, but I don’t have any other choice, so I find myself following him back up to the second floor and to one of the other rooms up there, yawning as I go, only just now realizing how tired I actually I am.

This room is darker than his without the fireplace going. He sets the candle holder that he’s been carrying around with him down on the bedside table. It provides a little bit of light but not much, adding to the creep factor of the room.

“I can bring more candles in if you want.”

I shake my head. “That’s fine. I’m just going to go to sleep, so I don’t need any more than that.”

“Okay. I’m just down the hall if you need anything.”

I nod and once he’s gone, I go to lock the door behind him, but there isn’t one. I consider barricading the door, but that would make too much noise and would probably cause him to come see what I was doing.

Sighing, I decide to just crawl into bed.

I blow out the candle and settle into the covers, pulling the blankets all the way up to my chin and close my eyes, trying to fall asleep. The sooner I fall asleep, the sooner morning will come, and the sooner that I can leave this place.

Sleep doesn’t come. There’s a creaking sound, as if someone is walking across the floorboards, but I’m certain that there is no one else in the room with me. There’s also a tapping sound on the window, which I’m sure if just from the wind and rain, but I can’t stop imagining that there is something out there.

I pull the blankets tighter around me, as if this could ward off any intruders. There’s a whispering sound that I wish I could simply write off as the wind, but it sounds too much like someone is speaking.

I can’t stay here, I decide.

I barge into Baz’s room without knocking, but he doesn’t so much as flinch. He looks up with a rather bored expression and waits for me to explain myself.

Somewhere in my mind, I notice that he’s changed out of the outfit that he was wearing earlier. I mean, of course, he has. He isn’t going to wear something like that to bed. There’s a weird pang in my chest, though, as I think about how good he looked in it, especially the boots. I really shouldn’t care, and shaking my head, I remind myself why I came in here.

“I’m leaving,” I tell him. “I just wanted to let you know.”

“What do you mean you’re leaving?”

“There’s something in that room, and I am not going to sleep there.”

“There’s nothing in there.”

“I heard noises.”

“It’s an old house; it makes noise.”

“There aren’t any of those noises in this room,” I point out. “I think that other room is haunted.”

“It’s not haunted.”

“How do you know that? You said yourself that this is an old house.”

“Yes, and it’s been in my family for generations. Ever since it was built. And I can promise you that no one has ever died here.”

_Yet._ He’ll probably make me the first. He’ll murder me down in the cellar and chop me up so that no one will ever find my body. He’ll go hide my car, and no one will ever know what happened to me. Penny is probably thinking that I just decided to skip the party. She thinks that I’m still upset about being dumped, but I’m not. I was glad to get out of that relationship. We were only together for about a month, and it was easy to see that we weren’t working well together. We worked better as friends.

It will take a while for people to even notice that I’m missing. By then, it will be too late.

“I’m leaving,” I repeat.

“Wait,” he says, setting his book aside and standing up, as if he plans to physically stop me from walking out of here.

“You said that I could leave whenever I wanted.”

“And I would feel guilty if I let you walk out of here and found you dead in the road in the morning.”

Why would he feel guilty if he plans to kill me himself?

“I’m not sleeping in that room.”

“Then sleep in here.”

“What?” I ask, freezing in astonishment. I hadn’t expected that.

“My couch is big enough for you to lie on, and I can guarantee that it’s better than running out into the rain.”

“Fine,” I give in with a sigh. I’m too tired to put up a fight.

He tosses me a pillow and gets a spare blanket from his closet. I settle onto the couch and feel infinitely more comfortable here than I did in that other room. I press my face into the pillow, and the smell of it relaxes me even more. It’s a strong, not entirely unpleasant scent. Something like a woody smell mixed with a spice that I can’t quite place, too tired to even really try as I drift off to sleep.

I can’t believe how easily I fall asleep considering the fact that I’ve been so certain that the other occupant of the room is planning to murder me. He could try to kill me right now, and I wouldn’t even put up much of a fight. Sleep takes over a few, short moments after my head hits the pillow, and I sleep deeply the entire night, all my worry just falling away.


	4. I'll Take My Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s still raining, and there’s no leaving anytime soon.

When I wake up in the morning, Baz’s bed is empty. It’s perfectly made, almost like he didn’t sleep in it at all last night. (Just more proof that he’s a vampire.) The fire looks as though it has been tended to, though, blazing brightly before me. The power must still be out.

I consider waiting for him to return, but then I decide to make my way downstairs and look for him. It might be better if I don’t just sit around, waiting for him to sneak up on me. Best to be on guard.

I can’t believe how easily I fell asleep here last night, or how deeply I slept after I did. It was one of the best sleeps that I’ve ever had, which is worrisome. It will be easy for him to attack me if that’s what he really wants to do. He could have easily killed me in my sleep last night, sucked me dry.

So, why didn’t he?

It isn’t too difficult to find him. I just follow the smell of cooking and find myself in the kitchen, and that’s when I freeze in my steps. I still don’t know why seeing him has this effect on me, but I wish it would stop.

Baz is already dressed for the day, wearing clothes that are not as fanciful as what he was wearing yesterday, but he looks good in them. I feel underdressed in the sweatpants and t-shirt I’m wearing as my eyes wander over his outfit for today. He’s wearing a plain long-sleeved t-shirt, but it’s clinging to his skin, almost like it’s a size too small. It shows off the shape of his body in a way that is quite flattering, and I barely manage to pull my eyes away long enough to look at his pants.

Jeans. He’s wearing jeans.

It’s such a normal piece of clothing, but it wasn’t what I was expecting him to be wearing after seeing what he wore yesterday. His outfit is so plain, yet, it causes something to stir deep inside of me. I ignore that as I remember the fact that his closet looked pretty empty, as if he didn’t have that many outfits here, which is strange for someone who cannot easily run to the store to buy more, seeing as he lives so far away from any kind of civilization. Shouldn’t he have more clothes? (Why do I care?)

Then, an image of what he would wear if he were to run out of clothes passes through my mind in time for him to turn and see me standing there with my facing flushing bright red and my body reacting in a way that is not appropriate at all.

Luckily, he doesn’t seem to notice.

“Morning,” he says, tossing a dish towel over his shoulder and picking up a spatula.

“G’morning.”

“You alright?” He asks, his eyes lingering on my face for a moment before he turns back to the pan on the stove.

“Yeah. Are you—? Are you cooking breakfast?” I ask incredulously. It should have been obvious before from the delicious smell that I followed here, but I was so struck by his clothing that I barely even noticed.

“I figured you might be hungry. I don’t have much. I hope you like scrambled eggs and toast.” He says all of this while stirring something in a pan, presumably the eggs. There’s another pan sitting on a different burner with a couple of pieces of bread in it.

“As long as you have loads of butter, I’m good.”

He looks at me curiously before passing me a large tub of it. It’s even bigger than the one that I have in my own fridge. I should ask him where he got it.

I sit on the one of the stools, on the opposite side of the counter from him and watch as he stirs the eggs. Or more accurately I watch the way that his slender fingers hold the spatula, the light glinting off of his fingernails – his red fingernails. He really likes the color red; it’s the same shade as his bedspread and the sweatshirt that he loaned me, which rests on the couch, which is a shade darker, but still red. So much red. (Probably because it’s the color of blood.)

Soon, he’s sliding the eggs on to a plate and setting it in front of me before lifting the two pieces of toast from the other pan. He hands me a fork and a knife, and I dig in.

I slather a generous amount of butter on to the slices of toast and then some. I look up, and Baz is watching me with a raised eyebrow and almost amused expression. It’s a look that starts my heart racing, and this time it isn’t because I’m afraid of him. It’s because of something else, something that I don’t want to think about. So, I don’t.

“Aren’t you going to eat something?” I ask him, scooping up some eggs and placing on the corner of one of my slices of toast.

“I’m not hungry.” Right. Because vampires don’t need to actually eat.

I take a bite of the food and just about moan from how good it is.

“This is so good,” I say, but my words are a little muffled by my mouth full of food. I blush and hurry to cover my mouth with my hand. I’m not usually this rude, but this is so good. I don’t even care if it’s poisoned at this point. This would be an excellent last meal. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten something that didn’t come from one of the dining halls.

He laughs lightly, and the sound surprises me. It’s soft and rings out through the room. It’s gentler than I what I would have expected from him.

Maybe that’s his play. He’s nice and handsome and draws you in by making you let your guard down around him. Then, he strikes.

This should make me more cautious. It absolutely should not make me want to hear more of his laugh.

“I’m glad you like it,” he says softly before turning to clean up the dishes. I offer again to help, but he just shakes his head. I feel kind of bad since I’m the only one eating, but he insists on me eating and relaxing, so I just watch him from where I’m seated, pretending that I’m not checking him out. Again.

***

“I should probably get going,” I say, almost regrettably, after I’ve finished breakfast.

“I don’t think you’ll be able to leave anytime soon.”

“Why not?” I ask, sounding more curious than suspicious, the opposite of how I sounded last night when I tried to leave and he told me I couldn’t.

“The rain doesn’t seem to have let up all night. It’s not storming at the moment, but it’s still coming down pretty hard out there. And the road’s flooded. Your car won’t be able to drive on it.”

I sigh. “Looks like I’m stuck here then.” That prospect doesn’t sound as bad as it should, but it still worries me.

“Looks like,” he agrees.

We move into the living room, and while he settles into a chair by the fireplace with a book, I find myself unable to sit still. I start out on the cushioned seat by the bay window, parting the curtains to watch the rain fall, but that gets dull fast.

I make it an hour, just sitting there and refusing his offer of borrowing one of his books, before I start up a pacing, hoping that it will help clear my head. I walk from the window to the other side of the room and back, walking back and forth. After a while this isn’t long enough so I include the kitchen in my pacing, making it a circle and picking up my pace.

I’m not sure what I’m trying so hard not to think about, but this walking is nice. It makes me feel not so cooped up. I even forget about Baz’s presence after a while. It’s just me and this circular path that I’m walking. Until.

“Snow.” I hear Baz say my name, but I ignore him, stepping into kitchen, swinging around the little island and reentering the living room. Then, he’s standing there in front of me, reaching out to grab my arms to keep me from moving again. “Snow, are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” I tell him.

“Then, do you think it’s possible that you could sit still?” I expect his tone to be harsh, but it isn’t.

“I’m bored. I hate sitting still and doing nothing.”

“I know.” He squeezes my arms once, lightly, before dropping his hands. “But there isn’t much that we can do until the rain lets up and the power comes back on.”

This is a softer side of him than the one that I first saw, like he’s thawing out the longer that I’m here. It’s a little weird, but his voice is calming.

“Are you hungry?” He asks.

“A little. What time is it?” I ask. There aren’t any clocks, and my phone is dead. Also, with the clouds blocking out the sun, it could be any time of day. I really don’t like being here like this.

“Almost one. I can make you food.”

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him.

“I know. Now, come on. Then, I can think of a few things to help fill the time.”

He winks at me as he says this, a smile pulling at his lips, before he moves around me and into the kitchen. The way he says it makes my heart race, and I begin to wonder if I should be worried about what exactly he has in mind.

It isn’t just my heart that is affected. There’s a strange feeling that sits inside of me, both new and unfamiliar, and I don’t know what to make of it. I do know that I shouldn’t trust him, but I do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should be up Thursday!
> 
> Chapter title from Madonna's Beautiful Stranger
> 
> Thank you for beta reading @wo2ash!! <3


	5. I'd Like to Change My Point of View

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baz and Simon play a game and start to get to know each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got a little long, so I cut it in half, and there are now 8 chapters in the fic. Chapter title from Madonna's Beautiful Stranger.
> 
> Thank you for beta reading @wo2ash!!

Baz offered to fill the time, but I didn’t think that that would mean that I’d end up stretched out beside him with less than two feet of space between us, both wishing that there was no space between us and that I could move farther away. It’s a war between my desire for him and desire for self-preservation.

We’re lying on the rug in front of the fireplace, trying to soak in its warmth. It’s a cold day for spring, what with the relentless rain and not seeing the sun since yesterday afternoon. The only space between me and Baz is the chess board that sits between us, baring all the evidence of how badly he is beating me. I’ve never been very good at playing chess.

“I quit,” I groan.

I turn over, and rolling onto my back, I notice the elegant chandelier overhead for the first time. This really is a nice house, and I’m interested in seeing what it looks like when there’s actually light instead of the dark shadowy corners making chills run down my spine.

“You only quit because you’re losing,” Baz says.

“So? I still quit.”

I look at him out of the side of my eye, taking in the amused look on his face as he looks down at me from where he sits cross-legged on the other side of the board. His lips curve up into a smile, one that catches me off guard every time that I see it because it’s so different from the sneer that seemed a permanent fixture of his face before.

I can’t keep my eyes from traveling down, tracing the movement of his Adam’s apple, the way his shirt fits snugly over his shoulders and down his torso. I skate my gaze quickly over his thighs, covered by the tight jeans he wears. My eyes fall on the strip of skin that shows on his ankle, between the hem of his pants and the constellation socks that he’s wearing, and the little star tattoo, just barely visible, half-hidden by top of one sock.

I force myself to tear my gaze away and sit up so that I can help him put the game away. I avoid making eye contact with him, hoping for the second time today that he hasn’t noticed me admiring his outfit or the blush the settles on my face. I’ve got to get a grip; I can’t keep staring at him like this. It’s weird.

“What do you suggest we do now?” He asks, setting the chess game back on the shelf where he got it, next to a stack of other games. None of them appeal to me either.

I know what I would like to do, but I don’t know if he’ll let me. I’m still worried that he might kill me if I make the wrong move. The desire is strong, though, and I can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop thinking about him.

“We can play a different game,” he suggests, sounding disappointed, when I just sit there quietly.

“What kind of game?” I ask, finally looking up. His features have morphed into one of indifference, and I find that I miss his smile.

“Up to you.” He’s got that cold mask back on, acting like he doesn’t care. I’m not sure what I did to upset him, but I’m determined to make things right.

“What about truth or dare?” I suggest.

“With just the two of us?”

“Why not?” I ask with a shrug. “Or we could just ask each other questions.”

“That’s not really a game.” He says, moving to perch on the edge of the arm of the couch, putting more space between the two of us.

“With a twist,” I say, an idea coming to me, anything to try to see more emotion form him, to create an excuse to spend more time talking to him.

I don’t know why I care since I’ll probably never see him again once I leave here, but I still feel a pull toward him, like the one I felt yesterday, drawing me into this house. Now, I feel drawn to him, a dangerous thing when a small part of me still fears him. I’m surprised to find that it really is just a small part now.

“What kind of twist?” He asks, and I’m pleased that he sounds curious.

“The questions can be as personal or inappropriate as we want, but we always have the choice not to answer. We can choose instead for the other person to give us a dare, and we have to either do that or answer the question.”

“Still sounds a lot like truth or dare.”

“Fine.” I sigh, giving up. “You come up with the game.”

“No, this is fine.” He still doesn’t sound completely sure, but I’m not going to argue it.

“Okay.”

“Want some tea first?” He asks, the cold mask turning into something softer.

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

I pretend like I’m not watching him walking away before I stand to follow him.

Once again, I let him make my tea for me without paying much attention to what he puts into it. At this point, I’m pretty sure that if he was planning on killing me, he wouldn’t do it by poisoning my drink. My food maybe, but not my tea.

We return to the living room, and this time, we sit together on the couch in front of the fireplace. It’s large enough for us to sit on either end of it and still have plenty of space between us. I turn to face him, tucking my feet under my legs and leaning back against the arm of the couch, trying not to take up more than my square of space, leaving the middle cushion between us empty.

He turns to face me, too, leaving one foot on the ground, resting the other one in front of him.

Suddenly nervous, I take a sip of my tea, trying to busy myself and keep my eyes from wandering again.

“So, how do you want to do this?” He asks.

“I’ll begin; are you straight?” Might as well start there since it’s the thing that I’m most curious about right now. Well, that and whether or not he plans to kill me. I can’t just come out and ask him that, though. He wouldn’t tell me the truth even if he was.

He quirks an eyebrow at me, but other than that, he doesn’t react to the bluntness of my question.

“No. Are you?”

“Not as much as I once thought.” I don’t mention the fact that, currently, Baz is the main reason that I am questioning it. Although, I had begun to question my sexuality before I even turned down this road. It has just become increasingly obvious ever since the door of this house was opened and I fainted into the arms of a handsome stranger.

I’ve only ever told two people about that. Now three. No matter how suspicious of this boy I am, I can’t stop thinking about how attractive he is and how I want to know more about him, which is why I suggested this game. It’s a chance to learn anything I want about him that he’s willing to tell me.

After the first question, the questions grow a little more normal, less personal. Favorite color (I half-expected his to be red, but it turns out that it’s green), favorite artist (his was some band that I’ve never heard of but plan to look up someday), favorite book (he picked up the one that he had been reading before we ate lunch, saying that his favorite book was always the one that he was currently reading because it was the world that he was currently living in; he then added a comment about how bad books were the exception but refused to tell me what made a bad book, saying that it was his turn to ask a question.)

Neither of us give the other a reason to choose a dare instead of answering the question, sticking to safe topics for the moment. I want to think of a way to change that without being so blunt again. I’m curious about him, but I don’t want it to be that obvious.

“Tell me something about your family,” he says.

“That’s not a question.”

He rolls his eyes. “What are your parents like?”

“I don’t know,” I admit with a shrug, looking down into my cup of tea.

“What do you mean?”

I shake my head. “It’s my turn to ask a question. Do you have any siblings?

“Yes.”

I want him to expand on his answer, ask him how many he has, but it’s not my turn to ask a question.

I expect him to immediately ask about my parents again, but he doesn’t.

“Is Snow really your name?”

“Yes.” It isn’t a full lie, but I’m still not sure if I should trust this guy who is a near complete stranger to me. “How old are you?”

“20.” Same as me. “Why don’t you know anything about your parents?”

“I was an orphan. I don’t know who they were. They abandoned me when I was a baby.”

I say it matter-of-factly, trying to pretend like it doesn’t really matter. He’s silent, obviously regretting asking, and I feel bad for ruining the light mood even though it wasn’t exactly my fault.

“Are you in school?” I ask him.

“I go to the university in town.”

“So do I,” I say offering up the information even though he didn’t ask.

“What’s your major?”

“I haven’t declared one yet. What about you?”

“English lit.” He pauses for a moment, almost imperceptibly, then says, “I want to teach like my mom.”

The tone of the questioning has turned more conversational. I begin to relax a little.

“What age does she teach?”

“She taught high school students.” He sounds sad as he says this, and I decide not to push it any further. Instead I change directions.

“Do you live here alone?”

“No.”

I want to ask more. If someone else lives here, where are they? Does he commute to school? This seems like a far way to go every day, but he maybe he likes the privacy of it, being way out here away from society. I wonder if he ever gets lonely.

“Are you single?” He asks,

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

I want to ask it back, and I hate how worried I am that the answer will be no. Why do I care? I’ve barely even known him for a day. That’s much too fast to be thinking about us being in a relationship, but he’s the one who brought it up, so maybe it’s not so crazy.

“I am, too,” he says before I can make up mind about whether to ask him. This fact shouldn’t make my heart race the way that it does.

I clear my throat. “Why do you live in such a big house all alone?”

“I just told you that I was single.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say, smiling in spite of myself.

“Then, what did you mean?”

“It’s a really big house. Doesn’t it get lonely?”

“I don’t actually live here.”

“What?”

“My turn to ask a question,” he says, a smirk changing the features of his face, softening it slightly.

I growl at him, irritated, but let it go.

“Do you want to kiss me?”

I just barely manage to keep from choking on the sip of tea that I’ve just taken. I know that I said that the questions could be about anything, but I wasn’t expecting this. What happens if I say yes? I can’t lie. I mean, I could, but that would be breaking the rules of the game.

“Dare,” I say. “I’ll take a dare.”

“I’ll take that as a yes then.”

“Why?”

“Why would you take a dare if the answer was no?” His smirk is beginning to bug me.

“What if I just don’t want to hurt your feelings?” I say, trying to regain some control of this.

“Why would you care?” He asks, a tone of curiosity making its way into his voice, probably without him meaning to.

“Fine. Yes,” I grit out, irritated by the fact that I can’t get out of this. “I want to kiss you.”

“I want to kiss you, too.”

I freeze, my grip tightening on the handle of my now empty tea cup. It doesn’t mean anything, I tell myself. Just because he wants to kiss me, it doesn’t mean that he actually will.

“More tea?” He asks, the tone of his voice turning falsely formal, the corner of mouth turning up like he’s trying not to laugh at my expression, which I know has to be a mix of shock and confusion.

“I—. Sure,” I say, stunned. What does this mean?

He takes my cup from my hand, and I don’t follow him to the kitchen this time. I sit there, trying to get my racing heart under control.

What just happened?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will be up on Saturday!


	6. I Looked Into Your Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Simon and Baz continue to get to know each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you @wo2ash for beta reading!!!

When Baz returns with my tea, he flashes me a strange smile before returning to his side of the couch. It suddenly feels like there is too much space between us, and I want him to move closer. He takes a sip of his tea, and I shift my position on the couch, taking the opportunity to slightly move forward on the couch, moving toward him but not enough to be noticeable.

“Your turn to ask a question,” he says, and the memory of his last question comes racing back, causing my face to warm. I have to get this back to a safer topic.

“What did you mean when you said you don’t live here? Are you just staying in some random person’s house?”

“That was two questions,” he says, irritating smirk finding its way back on his face. I almost prefer the look of indifference. Almost but not quite. This is almost a playful smirk and sends my stomach into a flurry of butterflies.

I sigh. “Answer the first one.”

“It’s my family’s home. They moved out of it when I went off to college, but they still own the house.” He pauses before asking his own question. “Where do you live?”

“One of the dorms on campus. What about you?”

“An apartment just off campus. Do you have a roommate that’s wondering where you are?”

“I don’t have a roommate.” I did during my first year of college, but it didn’t work out very well, so now I have my own room. I like it. It’s the first time that I’ve ever really had my own space. “Why are you here if you don’t live here?”

“I check on the house every few weeks and sometimes stay here a couple of nights when I need to get away from my roommates. I was planning on going back this morning, but then the storm hit.”

“Yeah, this storm hit at a bad time.” I say with a sigh.

“Or maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing,” he says. “So then no one’s wondering where you are?”

His questions are definitely starting to sound suspicious now. Is he trying to find out whether someone will come looking for me if I go missing? He’s probably wondering if he could get away with killing me.

“My friend Penny probably is. I was supposed to be meeting up with her last night.” Maybe he won’t kill me if he thinks someone will look for me here. “I told her I was taking a short cut,” I lie. “She’ll probably come looking for me.”

“Not in this storm.”

Right. My heart races again, but this time it is out of fear. No matter how attracted I might be to him or he might me to me, he could still have plans to kill me.

“What’s your father like?” I ask, changing course greatly. He told me a bit about his mother, and I’m curious to hear something about his father.

A new expression flashes across his face, one almost like hurt, but it’s gone before I can figure out what it means. The cold mask is back in place. I must have struck a chord.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I say softly, inching forward, realizing only now that he has moved towards me, too. I shouldn’t feel worried about someone I think might kill me before the sun rises again tomorrow, yet, here I am, giving him an out, bending the rules of my game for him.

“It’s fine,” he says, shaking his head and no longer making eye contact with me. “He tries. I know he does. It’s just that he’s never been able to really accept me for who I am. He couldn’t accept who I loved. It created tension between us, and I couldn’t wait to get away from home and go off to college. I almost ran away a couple of times.”

His expression remains blank, but the amount of emotion in his voice is almost shocking. It makes me want to hate his father for making him feel this way. I don’t even know Baz that well, but I wish that I could protect him from that pain.

I’ve never had parents who I had to care about what they thought of me, so I don’t know what’s that like. Having parents who don’t accept you is so much different than not having parents at all. At least I never had to worry about disappointing anyone or about whether who I loved would change how they looked at me.

“You don’t have to look at me like that,” he says, startling me out of my thoughts. “I know it sounds bad, but he still cares. He’s trying to come to terms with it. I just wish that it didn’t matter.”

“I’m sorry,” I say because I don’t know what else to do.

“Don’t be.”

“Okay,” I say, leaning back against the arm of the couch, which means moving away from him. I’m afraid that if I don’t move away, though, I’ll do something stupid, like reach out to comfort him.

The questions change again after that, moving away from the heavier topics and back towards learning about each other instead of about our past or our families. He surprises me by making me laugh a few times, and I’m even more surprised when I make him laugh.

We somehow gravitate closer to each other again, slowly, meeting in the middle of the couch, without ever making the conscious decision to do so. There’s only about half a foot of space between us, and it’s taking everything in me not to close it.

I’m also trying not to stare at his mouth, but this just means that I stare other places. Like the tightness of his jeans, wrapped around his legs, for example. And his eyes for another. His eyes are mesmerizing. Where they looked like a dull grey from far away, they now look like they have a myriad of different shades in them, ranging from a light, almost silver color to a dark grey that looks like the pavement after it’s just rained.

I find myself getting lost in his eyes, following the swirling colors, watching the way that they sparkle in the light of the crackling fire.

“What are you thinking about?” He asks, and I realize that I’ve been silent for too long and that I’ve been staring for even longer.

I could lie to him. I probably should lie. I definitely shouldn’t tell him the truth.

“I’ll take a dare,” I say.

He looks amused by that, and I can only imagine the thoughts that are running through him mind as he wonders what I could have been thinking about.

“Okay. I dare you to run around the house in the rain.” That’s not so bad, I think, but then I see a glint in his eyes. “Naked,” he adds.

“Why naked?” I ask, shifting under his intense gaze.

“It’s part of the dare.”

“You really want to see me naked, don’t you?” I say, sounding more brazen than I feel.

He smirks. “I told you that there were easier ways of getting your clothes off.”

I don’t think I’ve ever blushed this much in my life.

“Not that easy,” I tell him, “because I won’t do it.”

“Then answer the question.”

He’s backed me into a corner – both literally and figuratively because I hadn’t realized until this moment how close he has gotten, moving me farther into the corner of the couch as I move away – and he’s very aware of exactly what he’s done.

The choice is not a fun one but stripping down in front of him and running outside is not something that I want to do right now. It’s easier to just admit that I was staring at him and hope that I don’t die of embarrassment. I don’t have to give him details anyway.

“I was thinking about your eyes and, um, your jeans.” I honestly didn’t think that my blush could deepen, but apparently, it can.

“My jeans?” He asks with a mix of surprise and amusement.

“Yes.” I sigh, hoping he doesn’t ask anything more about it.

“You were blushing,” he states. “What were you thinking about them exactly?”

“Nope. I answered your question. Now, it’s my turn.”

He sighs, sounding exasperated and leans away from me, and I feel like I can finally breathe again. I attempt to smirk at him, but it feels more like a smile.

I don’t know what to say now. I have a million questions but none that would be appropriate to ask right now, none that I’m sure I want to know the answer to.

Then, I think of something. Something that I both do and don’t want to know about him because I’m afraid of the truth. I can’t just come out and ask him directly, though.

“What is something that not a lot of people know about you?”

“What kind of thing do you want to know?”

“Anything. What’s a big secret that you have?” Like, the fact you’re a vampire, for instance.

He thinks about it for a minute, and I watch him quietly. He turns to stare into the fire before speaking quietly.

“Sometimes I wish that I wasn’t gay,” He says quietly, then pauses. “I’ve accepted who I am, but when my own father can’t accept me, I wish that I could be what everyone else sees as normal. I guess what I really wish is that people were more accepting of different sexual orientations, that I didn’t feel like I need to hide who I am.”

I’m stunned for a moment. I wasn’t expecting such a deep and honest answer.

Forgetting for a moment about how I was expecting him to admit he was a vampire, I say, “You should never have to hide who you are. I like who I’ve gotten to know.”

He turns to me, his eyes widening, before he schools his features once more. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

I don’t know why he’s thanking me. There’s no reason to. I was just trying to give him glimpse of that honesty that he gave me.

“What about you?” He asks.

“What about me?”

“Any big secrets?

I think about it, wondering what exactly I would want him to know that others don’t. There aren’t that many things that I keep a secret. I tell Penny pretty much everything. I wonder what she will think when she finds out where I’ve been the past couple of days.

It takes me a couple of minutes, but I finally come up with something to tell him.

“I agreed to date my last partner because I thought we would be good together as a couple since we were good as friends. I thought that I could like them, and it turns out that I didn’t. Not like that. Before that, I dated a girl, who broke up with me because she didn’t think that either of us loved each other the right way. I think she was right.” I realize that I’m rambling and need to find a way to stop. “Basically, I suck at making the right choice when it comes to who I date.”

“Someday you’ll make the right choice,” he says, sounding certain in a way that I never have.

“I hope so.” I don’t know right now, though. I don’t feel very hopeful about that. “Do you think that you’ve ever made a good decision about dating someone?”

“I hope I’m about to,” he says quietly, thoughtfully.

“Oh.” Does that mean that he likes someone and plans on asking them out? Or that he plans on saying yes to someone? I shouldn’t feel disappointed like I do, but there’s a still a sad pang in my chest. I look away from him before he can notice a change in me.

“Are you attracted to me?” He asks.

I’m so caught up in my thoughts that I almost don’t hear him, and then I’m so surprised by it that I almost forget how to speak.

“Yes,” I breathe, with almost no hesitation. I realize it’s truer than I thought as I say it. This pull I feel towards him is new, stronger than anything I’ve felt with anyone I’ve dated before.

“Okay, new game.”                                                                                

“What?” I ask, jerking my head up in surprise.

“New game,” he repeats. “I make the rules, but you can say no at any time.”

My heart races at this, my mind spinning with ideas of what this means. I should say no, put a stop to whatever is about to happen before it starts, but my mouth seems to have a mind of its own, and I hear myself saying, “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! <3


	7. My Heart Was Dancing All Over The Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baz changes the game, and they tentatively begin to get to know each other in a different way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: This chapter is more mature than the others have been. I tried to keep things as more implied than anything, but I think it goes a little past teen rated.

I’m not sure what exactly I just agreed to, but I do know that I don’t plan on taking it back. Baz intrigues me, and at this point, he really could be planning to suck my blood, and I don’t think that I would attempt to stop him. That thought should scare me, but it doesn’t.

My heart is racing, though. I’m still sitting in the corner of the couch, and he’s just a few inches away from me. That small distance feels like far too much and not enough all at the same time, and it’s confusing to think about it. I want to not think about it, but that’s probably not the best idea when he just proposed some strange game that he won’t tell me about.

“What’s the new game?” I ask him.

He ignores the question, turning to place his cup on the coffee table in front of the couch.

“Are you done with your tea?” He asks, and I just nod, watching him as he takes the cup from my hand and sets it next to his.

Our fingers brush, sending tingles down my spine, and I’m not sure that the touch wasn’t intentional.

He turns back to me, making eye contact in a way that feels entirely too intimate for two people who just met yesterday. It feels right in a way, and it eases my worries about him marginally. Though, at this point, I have few worries about him left. He seems like a rather decent guy, and getting to know him is the best thing that could have happened to me this weekend. I’m beginning to dread us having to leave this house, leave this small space where it’s just the two of us.

Once reality sets back in, what will happen to us? Will we go our separate ways and never see each other again? I frown to myself, thinking that that’s not what I want at all and worried that it will be exactly what happens.

“Snow,” Baz says, and something in his face tells me that it isn’t the first time.

“Yeah?” I say softly.

“If you don’t want to play the game, that’s fine. Just let me know.”

I shake my head, trying to clear my thoughts. It’s probably best not to worry right now about what will happen when we leave. We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, I suppose.

“No, I want to play. Tell me the rules.”

“First rule, and the most important one: You can say no or ask me to stop at any time.”

“Okay?” It comes out as a question without me meaning it to.

It’s not that I don’t understand the rule. I just don’t know why it’s so important that he repeats it. What exactly am I getting myself into? Still, I continue to go along with what he’s saying.

“What’s the next rule?” I ask.

“There aren’t any.” He says as he slides closer to me, moving until we’re sitting side by side so that he can whisper his next words into my ear. “We can do whatever we want - within reason, of course - and either of us can stop it or say no to something that we aren’t comfortable with. It’s less of a game and more about getting to know each other a little more...intimately.”

The last word comes out on a breath, ghosting over the shell of my ear and sending a shiver down my spine. I have to fight to keep my eyes open and to keep myself from leaning into him. I have to focus on responding to him.

“Okay. So, what kinds of things were you thinking of doing to get to know each other better?” I ask, curious to see what he does.

He keeps his eyes locked on mine as he says, “Something like this perhaps.”

Then, he places his hand on my knee and just leaves it there. I wait for him to do something more, but he only looks at me, a question in his eyes. I don’t even hesitate; I nod at him, encouraging him to continue.

He keeps his hand where it is, but he presses his body more firmly against mine, pressing our legs together and lining our arms up so that our fingers brush. He turns his torso slightly so that he’s facing me, and I mirror his position. His grip on my knee tightens almost imperceptibly as our faces come to be only a few inches apart.

Realizing that I’ve been a passive participant in this game so far, I decide to make my own move. I move my right hand to cover his where it continues to rest on my knee, my warm one overlapping his cold one, slotting our fingers together.

I pause only a moment to make sure that he doesn’t object to it before lifting my other hand to place it on the side of his face, my thumb brushing across his cheek. I stop moving again, waiting for a response, waiting for him to either ask me to keep going or tell me to stop.

He leans into my touch before turning to press a soft kiss into the palm of my hand, keeping eye contact with me as he does. I feel my eyes flutter shut for a moment at the gentleness of the gesture, and when I open them again, he’s smiling at me, something soft and sweet, just a lift of one corner of his mouth, but something so utterly perfect.

I move my hand to run my fingers through his hair, and now, it’s his eyes that fall shut for a moment as I massage his scalp. His hair is soft and slides easily through my fingers. His eyes are still shut, but they open when I remove my hand from his and move it to rest on his hip.

I wait to watch his reaction, but he just keeps looking at me with a curious expression, so I keep going, sliding my hand up and underneath the hem of his shirt. He gasps almost inaudibly as my fingers graze his side. I just let my hand rest there, only moving my fingers to draw patterns on his smooth skin.

He brings his free hand up to tangle his fingers in my hair, and he tugs me closer to him so that his mouth is up against my ear.

We both stop our movements, so much closer now. I can feel his shallow breaths over my ear, almost tickling it, and it sends sparks across my skin everywhere that we touch.

I turn my face so that my lips brush across his cheek, and I hear it when his breath hitches. I want him to be closer, to be pressed up against him, but I wait for him to make the next move. I don’t have to wait long.

He presses his lips to my ear, a soft kiss, before he drags his lips across my cheek, moving closer to my mouth. I suck in a breath, waiting for his lips to meet mine, but he stops just shy of them, pressing another kiss to the corner of mouth.

I let out a shaky breath. I can feel my body shaking with the desire to kiss him. I tighten my hand into a fist in his hair, silently begging him to kiss me, but he doesn’t. It’s my turn to make a move.

I consider only briefly trying to draw this out more, but I can’t take it anymore. His lips are right there, tauntingly close and looking absolutely kissable. I turn my face so that our noses bump into each other, but I don’t kiss him yet.

I pause, breathing out a nervous laugh and take a moment to really think about what it is that we’re doing. I focus on the color of his eyes as I try not to stare down at his mouth, trying not to make it obvious how much I want this. I do want to close the distance, but I’m still worried that he doesn’t want to actually kiss me, that this might just be a game to him. Just some teasing fun to pass the time.

But then he’s the one who finally gives in, leaning forward to close the distance between us, brushing his lips across mine, a barely-there kiss. He starts to pull away, but that wasn’t enough.

I use the hand that’s still tangled in his hair to pull him back to me, and I press my lips firmly to his, kissing him for real this time.

He kisses me back immediately, and I just barely manage to keep myself from smiling into the kiss. I didn’t realize just how much I wanted to kiss him until it actually happened.

I pull away for a moment to catch my breath, but I keep my eyes closed as I rest my forehead against his.

“Is this okay?” I ask him, and I’m not sure why I’m whispering. It’s as if I’m afraid that if I speak too loud, it will break the moment.

“More than,” he murmurs. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the moment I saw you standing on my porch, before you fainted into my arms”.

“Why didn’t you?” I ask, opening my eyes to read his expression, to see if he’s serious.

“I didn’t want to scare you away.”

I laugh, thinking he’s probably right. I was very much on edge the first night that I spent here. Had he even looked at me the wrong way, I probably would have been long gone.

Before I can think of a response, he’s tilting my head back up to his and kissing me again. I groan at how good it feels. I’ve only kissed a couple of other people, and this is so much better than the way it felt with any of them. It feels right in a way that I didn’t know kissing should. How could I not have known that it could feel this good?

I feel his tongue run along the seam of my lips, and I don’t even think about it before letting him in, opening my mouth easily to him. I can’t stop the noise that I make when our tongues meet, tentatively exploring each other before the kiss deepens.

 And then for a while, it’s just the two of us kissing, switching between slow, soft kisses, our lips just barely touching, and practically trying to devour each other. We pull away only for a few moments to catch our breaths before diving back in. I start to become dizzy with the feel of it all, so much better than anything I’ve done with anyone else.

Slowly, his hand starts to move up from my knee, and I gasp. He stops moving immediately and pulls away from my mouth.

“Is this okay?” He asks.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?” He asks, searching my face for any sign that it might not be.

“Yeah, I was just surprised.”

He starts to say something else, but I shut him up with a kiss, pulling at his lower lip with my teeth. I smile to myself when it causes him to moan quietly. Then, his hand starts to move again, but it stops just short of touching me where I really want him to.

He stops all movement, and I just barely stop myself from whining when he stops kissing me again.

“Wh—?” I begin, but he cuts me off with a chaste kiss.

“Do you want to move upstairs to my room?” He asks quietly.

“I—.” I have to take a moment to think about that.

If I say yes, what happens then? I want to just say yes and give in to this desire, but impulse is never a good idea with something like this. His hand on my thigh is distracting, and I’m drunk on that woody scent that is so much stronger now that I’m leaning on him instead of just sleeping with the lingering scent on his pillow.

I close my eyes for a brief moment, trying to focus on what he asked me and what it is that I want. A voice in my head tells me that it isn’t a good idea to get into bed with a stranger, no matter how beautiful they may be, especially when I’m pretty sure that they are a vampire. Maybe this is his thing, seducing his prey before he kills them.

I push that thought away, telling myself that if he wanted to kill me, he would have done it already, whether he’s a vampire or not.

The next thing I need to decide is whether this is something that I really want. I’m physically attracted to him, but is that enough for me? Is that enough of a reason to do something with him? I think that it could be.

But this pull towards him is more than that. I know that falling in love with him in less than two days is near impossible, and I’m not saying that what I feel _is_ love. I just think that what I feel is stronger than anything I’ve ever felt. It’s like we were meant to be together; we were pulled by some invisible thread, and we were meant to meet here. Which makes it sound like I believe in soulmates or love at first sight, but that’s not it either. It’s more like fate.

I was meant to take a wrong turn. My car was meant to break down. It was meant to rain until it flooded. We were meant to get stuck here together. And I was meant to fall for him. I can only hope that he was meant to fall for me, too, that fate wants us to be together.

And who am I to go against fate?

It takes less than a minute to think through all of this and come to a decision, but I’m afraid that I’ve taken too long and he’ll have changed his mind by now. When I open my eyes again, though, all I see is a patient curiosity on his fine features. I breathe a sigh of relief and give him an answer.

“Yes.”

His smile is breathtaking as he stands up and holds his hand out to me. I let him pull me up, but I stop him from walking away just yet. I tug him close to me and kiss him fiercely, trying to convey to him these strange feelings that are stirring inside of me without having to put words to them. It’s too soon to talk about fate and whether we were really meant to be or if I’m reading way too much into everything that has been happening.

Either way, I want this moment with him. I want to take the chance to get to know him, even if being with me after we leave this house isn’t something that he wants.

I reluctantly pull out of the kiss, but he’s immediately pulling me after him, towards the stairs, picking up a candle along the way and leading me down the dark hall and up the stairs. We barely make it down the hall to his room before he’s pushing me up against the wall and kissing me again, one hand holding my hip and keeping me pinned there. As if I would want to move.

When he pulls away again, I feel myself leaning forward, chasing after his lips. My face starts to warm, but I manage to smile at him, only a little bit embarrassed as he leads me the last few steps to his room and inside.

Suddenly the fact that we’re in his room and that he invited me into his bed hits me. I mean, I knew what he was asking when I said yes, but it’s different being here. I don’t know what he’s going to expect of me.

I’ve never done anything like this before. I never made it much further than kissing with the people I dated before.

I want this with Baz, but I’m afraid that I’ll do something wrong. Or that I won’t know what to do. He seems so cool and confident, and I’m so inexperienced.

He sets the candle that he’s carrying down on top of his dresser and lights a few more while I just watch. He turns back to me, and he must see the panic in my face. He steps closer to me, taking one of my hands in his and bringing the other one up to push a strand of my hair out of my eyes, and he speaks to me in a gentle voice

“We don’t have to do anything. We can just continue kissing. Or we can stop completely.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I want…” But I’m not sure what I want. “I want more, but.” I don’t know how to tell him that I’m nervous.

“It’s okay. We can take it slow, and remember, you can tell me to stop at any point.”

“Okay,” I say, nodding, before I let him lead me to his bed, kissing as we go. We nearly trip on the steps that lead up to it, but it helps lighten the mood as we smile into the kiss.

He pushes me down on his bed, and I scoot up until I’m resting on his pillows. And then he’s there, too, leaning over me and capturing my lips once again into a soft kiss.

This time, I’m the one asking for entrance into his mouth, and he grants it eagerly. Our tongues tangle together, rolling around each other, desperately learning the taste and feel of each other’s mouths.

I feel his teeth drag across my tongue before he sucks it into his mouth, pulling a low moan from deep in my throat. I blush at how loud the sound is, but he doesn’t seem bothered by it. He even seems to be encouraged by it as he sucks harder on it and his fingers dig into my hips.

I pull away with a gasp, needing to catch my breath and to get some control on the way that every touch from him affects me. I feel myself losing control, but this feeling is nice.

As I look up at him, I realize that he’s still hovering above me, like he’s afraid that he’s going to crush me, so I wrap my legs around his and pull him down on top of me. He gasps as our bodies slot together, and I move to kiss along his jaw, creating a trail down to his throat. I pause for a moment before I begin to suck a mark onto his smooth skin.

He gasps again, but it turns into a moan, his hand tightening in my hair. I pull away, licking a stripe over his marred skin, and he instantly pulls me into another kiss, our mouths crashing together in his rush.

My hands slip under his shirt and start to roam his back, fingers skating over his ribs and then over one of his nipples, eliciting a surprised sound from him. He releases my hair and reaches down to tug his shirt over his head.

It’s my turn to gasp as my eyes trail over his arms.

They’re covered in colorful tattoos, spiraling up to end at the top of his shoulders, black designs, interspersed with pops of colors.

There’s a vine of flowers wrapping around one arm. I’m not really sure what flower it is, but it’s pretty. There are flames that lick up around the trail of flowers, not like they’re setting them on fire, but as if they’re interwoven. The flames are the most prominent part of the tattoos, their bright red color making them stand out. His other arm is mostly an outline of designs, not yet finished, waiting to be filled in.

There is so much to look at it, and I could spend hours staring at Baz’s tattoos, I think, reaching out to trace one of the flowers with my finger.

 _Beautiful_. I don’t realize that I’ve said it aloud until he responds a moment later, his voice sounding rough.

“Me or the art?” He asks jokingly, but he shifts under my gaze.

“Both,” I whisper. “I can’t believe that I didn’t notice them before.”

I watch as his eyes widen, then, I turn to press a kiss to the inside of his wrist, right where a small flower is, different from the others. The color is a light blue, almost a silvery blue, and I when I look back up, I find specks of the same color in his eyes.

“I’m not surprised,” He murmurs. “You did seem to be looking elsewhere. Like you said earlier.”

I feel my face warm, remembering how I got caught staring at him. That doesn’t seem to matter right now, though. Especially if it somehow led to this.

“You’re beautiful,” I tell him again, watching the delicate blush that spreads across his cheeks.

Baz kisses me again, a searing kiss full of want. I push up into him, pressing my chest to his bare one and running my hands over his back. I drag my nails lightly down his back, and I feel him shiver pleasantly as he arcs into me.

I gasp at the feel of him against me, and I dig my nails in deeper for just a moment before I realize what I’m doing and rub my hands soothingly over his back again.

“Sorry,” I whisper into his hair.

“Don’t be,” He murmurs, sitting up. I try to pull him back to me, but he stops me. “Take your shirt off.”

I don’t make eye contact with him as I reach down to pull my shirt off, feeling a little self-conscious, but when I look back up at him, his eyes aren’t on my face either.

Baz’s eyes move appraisingly over my bare chest, and I fight against the urge to close my eyes under his look of complete admiration and desire. He slowly reaches out a hand to run over my chest, and I watch the intense look of concentration on his face.

His movements are slow as he explores my skin, dragging a thumb over my nipples, which causes me to gasp. I just watch him until it becomes both too much and not enough.

I reach up and pull him back down to me so that I can kiss him quickly before moving to bury my face in his neck. I take a deep breath and then sigh at the warm scent of him that is slowly becoming familiar, something that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget.

I move my hands up to tangle in his hair and look back up at him. There’s a strange look in his eyes, but it isn’t a bad one. I kiss him again, and if we spent the rest of the day, just doing this, I don’t think that I would mind at all. It’s perfect. But I want more, and he seems to also as he starts to move downward, pressing a warm trail of kisses across my skin.

He stops a moment to bite down on my shoulder, drawing a low moan from me, and somewhere in my mind, I realize that I should be worried about it. I should be aware of some pain, of him sucking my blood. I’m too wrapped up in how good it feels - how good everything that he’s doing feels - to hold on to that worry or try to stop him.

He sucks lightly on that spot before he continues moving.

“Wait,” I say, gripping his hair lightly and trying to catch my breath. “There’s something that you should know.”

He stops instantly, and I realize that he meant what he said when he told me that we could stop if I wanted to.

“What is it?” He asks curiously, sitting up so that he can look back at my face.

“My name is Simon, not Snow.”

“So, you lied.” He sounds more amused than angry as he leans down to kiss my cheek.

“Not exactly. Snow is my last name.”

“Broke the rules of your own game,” he murmurs into my skin.

“Technically, you didn’t ask if it was my first name.”

“And technically, you still lied.”

I don’t know how he is still managing to talk as he licks and bites his way back down to my chest. I can barely string coherent thoughts together, and here he is, teasing me as he goes.

“Wasn’t sure if I could trust you,” I admit.

“Why?” He sounds surprised but also a little hurt.

“Strange boy in a strange house in the middle of nowhere?”

“Hm, I guess I can see that.” He pulls a bit of my skin between his teeth, and I moan. “Do you trust me now?”

“Yes,” I say, surprising myself. I do trust him. Maybe I shouldn’t, but I do.

He looks up, seeming surprised, too. Was he really expecting me to say no? Even now?

I run my fingers through his hair as we make eye contact for a few seconds longer than what should be comfortable, and his eyes drift shut at the feeling. I smile to myself at that, at how we can both make each other feel this good.

“Do you trust me?” I ask quietly, almost afraid of the answer.

“Yes,” he says without hesitating, his eyes still shut.

My hand freezes in his hair for just a moment, and I watch as the corners of his mouth turn up just slightly, like he’s trying not to smile.

Everything up to this moment has been slow moving, and I’m pretty sure part of it has been because I was hesitant at first. But now, it’s becoming tortuous, and I want more.

I don’t say this aloud to him, instead using his momentary distraction to my advantage, placing my hands on his hips and flipping us.

He gasps in surprise, his eyes flying open. He doesn’t complain, though, so I move to straddle his hips, resting the palms of my hands on his chest, feeling his racing heart beneath my hand. So, he is alive, I think. Vampires don’t have heartbeats, do they?

I move my hands down until my thumbs slip under the waistband of his jeans. My hands shake slightly with the nervousness that I feel, and I hope he doesn’t notice. I’m inexperienced at this, and I don’t want that to make him turn me away. I’m not trying to pretend that I’m more experienced than I am, but I also don’t want that to somehow change things.

“May I?” I ask, as my fingers play over the button of his pants.

He lets out a soft sigh before saying, “Yes.”

As I unbutton his pants so that I can pull them open, I lean down to kiss him again. It’s messy and lust-filled. Tongues twisting and teeth clashing and desperate moans escaping both of us. When I finally manage to get his jeans open and pulled down some, Baz gasps, and we pull apart.

Things start to move faster after that, our movements becoming more hurried. We work to get my pants off, too, and then, hands are running everywhere, trying to explore as much of each other as we can.

When he reaches down to pull my boxers down, he hesitates and reminds me that we don’t have to do this. I assure him that I want this, and once he’s certain that I’m sure, he pulls them down and starts stroking me at a slow, tortuous pace.

“Too slow,” I grit out after a moment, unable to hide how much I want this right now.

He huffs out a laugh before picking up his pace, and I move back onto his thighs so that I can slide my hand under the waistband of his underwear and wrap my hand around him, bringing him pleasure, too.

We move together after that, finding a pace that is good for the both of us, trading chaste kisses and working to find pleasure together, reaching our climax within a few seconds of each other.

I collapse on top of him, ignoring the mess that we’ve made for the moment, and he wraps his arms around me as we both come back down from our high. When my breathing starts to return to normal, I roll off of him and rest next to him on the bed. His hand seeks mine, and I intertwine our fingers.

I feel myself relax, and I think that I could fall asleep right now if I wasn’t so aware of the mess that we’ve made. Baz must be thinking about that, too.

“We should clean up,” he says quietly, and I just nod, squeezing his hand. “You can use the bathroom up here, and I’ll go downstairs.”

“Okay,” I say, but I continue to lie there.

“You know you have to actually get up, right?” He says, and I can hear the smile in his voice without having to turn to look at him.

“I don’t see you moving,” I say, looking at him pointedly. He is definitely wearing a smile even though it looks like he might be trying to fight it.

“Maybe I’m not motivated enough.”

“You could join me in the shower,” I tell him, only half joking. “Is that motivation enough?

He groans quietly before saying, “Yes, but I don’t think we would get much actual cleaning done.”

“You mean you don’t think that you’d be able to keep your hands off of me.”

I expect him to argue it, but he just lets out a breathy laugh before pushing himself up to a sitting position, releasing my hand. I sit up next to him, and before he can move to get off the bed, I reach out to place my hand on the side of his face and turn him back to face me so that I can kiss him.

“Mm.” He hums against my lips, allowing me to kiss him for a minute, before pulling away. “Let’s clean up. Separately,” he adds with a small smile. “Then, I’ll make us some food.”

At the mention of food, my stomach growls, and I duck my head to hide my blush from him. He places a finger underneath my chin to tilt my face up to his. He kisses me quickly, a firm but short press of his lips to mine. It’s surprisingly soft and leaves me wanting more. We really do need to clean up, though.

Sighing, I turn away from him and slide off of the bed, pulling my boxers back up as I do. He slides off of the bed shortly after I do, and I miss his warmth already as I make my way towards the door.   

“Wait,” he says softly just as I’m about to step out into the hall. I turn to face him again, and he holds out a candle and a folded pair of sweatpants. “You’re going to need these.”

Right, I think, blushing. I need something to put on. We’re both wearing very little now, which is nice because it makes it easier to admire him, but something clean would be nice. He doesn’t give me a shirt, but I don’t complain. I’m feeling uncomfortably warm, and the cooler air against my skin will be nice.

My eyes fall to his mouth, and I’m surprised by how much I want to kiss him again. I’ve never felt this strongly about someone.

“Thanks,” I murmur, forcing myself to look back up into his face. He’s wearing a smirk, and I know that I’ve been caught staring again.

“See you in the kitchen,” he whispers as he moves past me, letting his fingers skate over my back for just a moment as he steps out into the hall. I wash embarrassingly quickly, as fast as I can while still making sure to get clean, eager to see him again. He seems to do the same, managing to beat me to the kitchen.

Dinner is sandwiches since he didn’t bring much food, not having planned on staying more than a couple of days. He actually eats this time, and I just barely keep myself from commenting on that fact out loud. Accusing him of being a vampire at this point probably wouldn’t lead to anything good.

While we eat, I manage to keep my hands off of him, but I can’t say the same for my eyes. Eating seems to re energize us, and we end up in his bed again, sooner than I thought we would.

The second night spent in this strange house is much better than the night before. Although, we don’t do much sleeping at first, finding new ways to explore each other with our hands and mouths.

When we finally fall asleep, limbs tangled, and fighting to stay awake just a little bit longer so that the night doesn’t end, I feel happy and sated. I feel like something big has changed in my life and that there is no going back after this. I don’t mind it. I wouldn’t change anything about the past couple of days even if I could.

I just hope that when we leave this house, it won’t mean that we’ll be going our separate ways. I don’t want this thing between us to be something that only exist within these walls. Maybe asking for more from him is a stupid idea, but I don’t want this to be a one-off. I want to get to know him, to have a relationship with him. I can only hope that he wants the same.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Madonna's Beautiful Stranger
> 
> Thank you @wo2ash for beta reading!! <3


	8. And My World Came Tumbling Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's time for Simon and Baz to leave, and they have to find a way to talk about what happens with them once they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry that it took me so long to post the final chapter. I got busy with finals and stuff and had to shove things aside, but I'm back!! I hope you all like it!
> 
> Thank you so much for beta reading @wo2ash!! <3

I wake with Baz lying half on top of me, his arm slung over my waist and one of his legs wrapped around one of mine. His head rests on my chest, and when I breathe in, I can smell his shampoo.

One of my arms rests underneath him, holding him to me, and I run my hand up and down his back, awed by how quickly we fell into something so gentle with each other in just a couple of days. I don’t think about the fact that it will probably end just as quickly. I can’t think about that.

I take a moment to look him over without worrying that he’ll catch me staring.

He’s beautiful. With his long hair falling loosely around him and his body wrapped around mine.

He threw on a short-sleeved shirt last night, and it leaves his tattoos on full display. I take delight in the fact that he didn’t cover them up with long sleeves again. It allows me to follow the trail of flames with my eyes, remembering the way I traced them with my tongue last night.

I force myself to look away as my body reacts to the memory of it and the way he pulled me into a rough kiss when I was done.

I take a deep, quiet breath to calm myself. I want to stay in this bed and wait for him to wake, but there’s something that I want to see, something he won’t let me look at if he wakes up.

Moving slowly so as not to wake him, I reluctantly untangle my body from his and slip out of the bed. I cast one more lingering look at him, wanting to climb back into the bed where it’s warm and just hang on to this nice moment for a little while longer.

Reminding myself that I’ll be back in a minute, I turn away from him and head out of the room.

When I get downstairs to the kitchen, I hear a humming noise that appears to be coming from the refrigerator. I open it up, and the little light inside comes on. The power is back on.

I set the candle that I’m carrying down on the counter and find the light switch and flip it on. Then, I turn to face that locked door again, the one that he told me to stay out of when I first got here. It’s still padlocked shut, and I’m still curious as ever about what lies behind it.

I know it’s a bad idea to pry, but I have to know. I find Baz’ keys where they hang on a hook above the kitchen counter. There are only a few keys on the ring, so it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out which one opens the door.

The third key that I try slides in and turns easily. My heart pounds in my chest, both at the thought that I’ll get caught snooping and the worry about what I’ll find down there.

Behind the door is a sea of darkness. The light from the kitchen illuminates the top of a staircase, but that’s all I can see from here. I reach my hand around the doorway and search the wall until I find a light switch. I flick it on, and I’m disappointed by what I see down there.

“But,” I say quietly to myself. “It’s just a cellar.”

“I know,” a voice says behind me. “I told you that.”

I startle so bad that I nearly fall down the stairs. A pair of arms come to wrap around me from behind, catching me just in time. This is the second time that Baz has caught me.

“Jesus, Snow,” he murmurs in my ear. “You’re going to kill yourself in this house. What are you doing out of bed anyway?”

“I thought you were lying. I thought it was—.” I cut myself off, remembering that I thought it was some kind of sex dungeon.

“You thought it was what?” He asks, but the soft kisses that he places to the back of my neck are distracting. This is something I’m going to miss, and my heart actually aches from it. I should put a stop to this now, before it becomes impossible to leave him, but that’s easier said than done. (And it might be a little too late for that.)

“I-I don’t know,” I breathe.

“Then why are you so interested in it?” He asks, nibbling at my ear.

“Because it’s locked, and you wouldn’t tell me what it was.”

“I told you it was a cellar.”

“Doesn’t explain why it’s locked.”

I hear him sigh behind me before he rests his forehead on my shoulder. “I have younger siblings. We’ve always kept it locked so that there wasn’t any chance of them falling down the stairs.”

“Oh.”

“Curiosity satisfied?” He asks.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says, pulling me back and closing the door. I turn in his arms before he can reach out to lock the door back.

As I meet his grey eyes, I know that I’m screwed. I’m not going to want to leave him, but it still might happen.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, and I realizing that I’ve been frowning.

“Nothing,” I tell him. Then, I pull him down to kiss me.

I sigh against his lips, loving the way that it feels.

He rubs up against me, achingly slowly, and bites down on my neck. I tighten my arms around him, but he pulls away and takes a step back.

“I’m going to make breakfast,” He says in a tone that brooks no argument, his expression showing that he’s very aware of what he’s just done.

“Tease,” I growl.

“Don’t tell me you’re not hungry. I’ve seen the way you eat.”

“What about you? Aren’t you hungry?”

“Yes,” he says, and his eyes drag down my body in a way that has me shifting uncomfortably on my feet. When his gaze finally makes its way back to my eyes, I bite my lip to keep from making a noise in reaction to the look in his eyes. He definitely looks like he wants to devour something right now, and I don’t think it’s food.

I clear my throat. “So. Food?”

“Of course.” He turns on his heel, and I follow him to the now familiar kitchen.

***

We eat breakfast sitting side by side at the bar. Baz does eat this time, and I find myself “accidentally” bumping my arm into his more times than would seem like an accident. He doesn’t seem to mind, and at one point, his knee bumps against mine and settles there.

“Looks like you might be able to go home today,” He says conversationally as we finish up eating. He’s looking out the kitchen window, where the sun is now shining through.

“W-what?” I ask, caught off guard by the unexpected statement.

“It quit raining sometime last night, and the sun is beginning to come out. If it dries up enough of the water out there, we should be able to leave.”

“Oh,” I say, hoping that I don’t sound too disappointed by that. I stare down at the last few bites of food on my plate, no longer hungry.

I knew that we would have to leave eventually, but I didn’t expect for things to end up like this, with me falling for the guy in strange clothing that I met in the middle of a rainstorm. We’ll have the rest of the morning to spend with each other, but it doesn’t seem like it will be enough time. And I definitely can’t tell him how I feel. This was probably all just a bit of fun for him, a nice way to pass the time.

“We probably still have a few hours here, though.”

I just nod, unable to meet his eyes. I know that if I do, he’ll be able to read my feelings like I’m an open book. I’ve never been very good at hiding my emotions.

“A few hours to spend _together_ ,” he adds, bumping my elbow with his, and I can’t help myself. I look up at him hopefully, wondering whether he really means that.

“What do you mean?” I ask, going for nonchalance but missing the mark by a wide margin. One corner of his mouth is turned up like he’s trying hard not to smile.

“We still have time to get to know each other and decide whether we want to continue this thing between us, make it more, when we leave.”

“You really want to be with me?” I ask, knowing that I sound more surprised than I mean to let on.

“You think I don’t want to?”

I shrug, unwilling to admit that that’s exactly what I think.

“Snow,” he begins.

“Simon.”

“Hm?”

“Call me Simon,” I tell him.

“I think I prefer to call you Snow.”

“That’s not what it seemed like last night.” At least that’s not what he was calling out last night as we moved together, finding pleasure in each other’s touch.

A beautiful blush stains his cheeks, spreading up to the tips of his ears.

“Of course, I want to spend more time with you,” he says, moving on from that subject. “Did you think that I would just let anybody into my house?”

“You probably felt like you had to since I fainted into your arms,” I say, but I smile to let him know that I’m joking. It seems to work because he lets out a small laugh.

“Well, I can tell you with certainty that it was more than that. Something drew me to you, and I knew that I couldn’t just let you walk out of here without trying to at least be friendly with you.”

My eyes widen as he talks about that pull that drew us together. I thought that maybe it was all in my head, but maybe it really was fate. Even if this relationship – or whatever it is – doesn’t last long outside of this house, I think that we were meant to meet.

“I want this,” I tell him. “I mean, I want to see what this thing between us is, w-whether it’s more,” I clarify, stumbling over my words a bit as I try to get across how I feel.

“I want this, too.”

I feel my face break out into a grin, and he smiles, too, before leaning over and kissing me softly.

“Want to go up and sit in the tower for a while?”

“The tower?” I ask, frowning a bit.

After everything that we did last night, I don’t think that I should still be afraid of him, but what if he wants to lock me up in there, keep me here with him, like some kind of demented kidnapper.

It starts my heart racing in all the wrong ways, caused by a crazy rush of excitement as my mind goes wild with ideas of what might happen if he really did lock me up. It feels wrong to be excited, but I don’t know how to stop it.

“Yeah, I want to show you something.”

That should worry me, too, I think, but then I hear myself agreeing to go with him.

We quickly clear away breakfast, and he actually lets me help him this time, which ends up slowing us down instead of making it go by faster because I keep “accidentally” brushing my hand against his and letting it linger there.

When we’re finally done, he takes my hand, intertwining our fingers, and leads me up the stairs, all the way to the top. He lets go of my hand as we near the landing to pull out his keys and unlock the door. He steps inside, and I follow him slowly.

I don’t know what I expected to see up here, but it wasn’t this. It turns out the that the tower is just a private little library, and Baz seems to soften as soon as we step farther inside.

“This is my favorite room in the house,” he says, his hand coming up to rest low on my back.

The room is lined with floor to ceiling bookshelves, except for where the window overlooking the front yard is, and there are a pair of comfortable looking armchairs in the middle of the room.

We stand there for a moment, and when I turn to look at him, there’s a glimmer of something in his eyes. I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s caused by simply being up here.

“It’s nice,” I tell him, and I mean it. I’m not a very big reader, but I like it here.

He gives me a small smile before moving over to one of the shelves to look at the books. I walk over to a different one, dragging my finger along the spines of the books. I’m surprised to find that they aren’t dusty. He really does take care of this house, but I think he takes care of this room in particular.

“We can stay up here and read if you want,” Baz says after a couple of quiet minutes. “Or we can go back down and find something else to do.”

“This is fine,” I tell him. He seems happy and comfortable here, so I want to stay.

I watch as he selects a book from the shelf in front of him before moving to settle into one of the chairs. I continue looking at the books for a little bit longer before pulling one out and sitting in the unoccupied seat.

I sit with my legs swung over one of the arms of the chair with a book sitting open in my lap. It’s a comfortable position, and I manage to sit still for a while. Eventually, though, I start to grow restless, unable to focus on the words on the page any longer.

I look around some more, and I can see why Baz likes it up here; it’s nice. It’s quiet and welcoming. I just have more trouble than most settling down and sitting still for long moments at a time. This is made more difficult by the images that flash behind my eyes, like a movie, distracting me from the book that I’m supposed to be reading.

I remember the things we did last night, the way he looked underneath me on the bed, and the way that I peered up at him later, watching his reactions. I remember the little sounds that he made, all the soft sighs and low moans, knowing that I’m the one who made him feel that way.

I know that I made my fair share of noises last night, and I blush at the memory of it all, how easily I fell apart under his touch. It’s still hard to believe that he has never done any of that before, that he is just as experienced as I am. When he told me that, it made me feel less self-conscious about how inexperienced I was. I didn’t have to worry that I wouldn’t be able to meet his expectations, and we could both just enjoy each other, learning things we did and didn’t like. We worked through it together and found comfort in each other’s arms at the end of it.

I glance over at Baz where he sits in a chair that’s identical to mine, just a few feet away from me. His knees are drawn up to his chest as he rests against the arm of the chair, holding a book open in his hands.

He tied his hair up into a bun at some point, and I yearn to walk over to him, pull it down, and work my hand through it, feel the soft strands run through my fingers.

He looks up and catches me looking at him, so I give him a quick smile before looking back at my book, pretending to read it. It isn’t long before I feel my eyes being drawn to him again. Watching him read is much more interesting than reading my own book.

As if he can feel my eyes on him, he looks up and once again catches me staring at him. His lips curve into a smirk as he closes his book and sets it on the table that rests between our two chairs.

“Bored?” He asks, stretching and showing off the length of his body.

Of course, this starts up the flashing of images again at the reminder of what happened yesterday when I was bored. The look he gives me makes it clear that he knows exactly what’s on my mind.

Blushing, I turn away from him and murmur, “No, I’m fine.”

He’s quiet for a long moment before he says, “You sure about that?”

His voice is much closer now, and I know he must be standing behind my chair. I fidget with the page of my book, fighting the urge to turn and look at him. I feel his fingers thread their way into my hair, and I lean into his touch without making the conscious decision to do so.

“Y-yes,” I say, and there’s no way he believes that.

“Okay then.” Then, his hand leaves my hair, and I realize he’s teasing me again.

“Wait,” I say, turning to see him walking away.

“Yes?” He asks, turning back to me, his expression carefully set into one of nonchalance, but I can see right through it. The corner of his mouth twitches as he tries not to smile, and his eyes rest on my lips for just a moment too long.

He’s waiting for me to give in, but he wants this just as much as I do.

“Are _you_ bored?” I ask him.

“Nope. I’m fine.”

“Hmm.” I stand abandoning my book in the chair, and move around to stand in front of him, leaving only a couple of inches between us and leaning in to murmur in his ear. “Are you really?”

“Yes,” he says, but his breath hitches as I drag my lips along his jaw and over to his mouth, stopping just before our lips meet. I hear him gasp, but I pull back, smirking at him.

“Alright,” I say with a shrug. “If you’re sure.” Then, I turn away to go back to my seat. I barely make it two steps before he’s reaching out to grab my arm and spinning me back around to face him.

“You win,” he whispers before pulling me up against him and kissing me breathless.

I smile against his lips and kiss him back just as eagerly. I wrap my arms around his waist and tilt my chin up, allowing him to deepen the kiss as he brings one hand up to tangle in my hair, the other resting on the side of my neck, thumb brushing along my collar bone.

We pull away for just a moment to catch our breaths, and then we’re kissing each other again. I run my tongue along his bottom lip, and he opens immediately, letting me in.

I sigh contentedly as our tongues meet, wrapping around each other. It’s just as nice as yesterday. Only, this time I know that this won’t be a one-off kind of thing. We have time to get to know each other, and we’ll make more time after we leave here.

Knowing this allows me to slow the kiss, soften it and move slower against his lips, taking the time to really enjoy the feel of them against mine. There’s no need to rush now that I’m sure I’ll have another chance to do this again.

His fingers are combing through my hair, and it feels so nice that I stop for a moment to enjoy the feeling of it. This leaves Baz to kiss down my neck, sucking occasionally and probably leaving new marks amongst the ones that he left last night.

I’ll have to find a way to hide them from Penny before I meet up with her. And I’ll have to find a way to tell her about Baz. I hope she doesn’t think that it was an insane idea to fall this deep for a guy I just met. She probably will, but I hope that she’ll at least give him a chance.

Baz bites down particularly hard on the spot where my shoulder and neck meet, and those thoughts leave my mind as I groan quietly into his hair. I pull him back up to kiss me. He hums against my lips as I slip my fingers beneath his shirt, wanting to feel the smoothness of his skin.

He lifts his arms and allows me to pull his shirt off of him. Then, he backs me up until he has me pressed against the back of the chair that I was sitting in a moment ago.

“Still bored?” He asks as he presses his body against mine.

“Hmm. Maybe a little,” I say, smirking at him.

“I’ll just have to fix that then, won’t I?” He says breathily against my ear.

I start to laugh but he cuts me off with a rough press of his lips to mine. Then, he’s sliding down to the floor.

“Oh, god,” I groan at way that he looks on his knees in front of me. I’m definitely not bored anymore.

***

By the time that lunch rolls around, I’m no longer bored, and I feel more relaxed than I did when we went up there. We’re sitting quietly again as we eat. He doesn’t seem to like to talk much while eating, but I don’t mind it. I like just being with him, knowing that this is more than something physical.

 We clean up quietly, too. Well, he cleans up. After how long it took us this morning, he decided that it would be quicker to just do it by himself, and I agreed. I’m leaning against the counter watching him, and when he turns around after putting everything away, I pull him to me, simply holding his hand and smiling up at him.

“I’m going to go pack up my stuff,” he says, breaking the silence, “and then we can head out.”

“Already?” I ask.

“We spent half the day here already. Plus, I’m sure you’re dying to get out of here.”

“Right,” I say slowly, even as I realize that it isn’t true. I don’t want to leave here. I don’t want to leave him. I can’t tell him that, though, so twenty minutes later, we’re standing in the grand entry hall, and it’s time to go.

The sun is shining through the little glass window in the door, and I have one more question for him. One more clarification before we leave.

“Wait,” I say as he reaches for the doorknob. “You can go out in the sun?”

“Uh..yes?” He says, looking at me quizzically.

“Oh.”

“That surprises you?”

I shrug.

“Why does that surprise you?” He asks, turning to face me, looking amused.

“I thought you were a vampire,” I mumble.

“You what?”

“Up until you bit me.”

Baz blushes, thinking about it.

“If you were a vamp, you wouldn’t be able to blush so beautifully.” I step up to him, placing my hand on his chest. “And I can feel your heart beating.” I smirk, knowing that it has sped up. “You are definitely fully alive. There’s no way someone as beautiful as you isn’t alive.”

He gasps before kissing me, hard. His lips press hungrily into mine, and I just take it, my heart pounding in my chest. He pulls away much too soon, and we step outside together and get into his car.

The drive is quiet. I spend most of it staring out the window to avoid staring at him and having him see right through me, see how much I care, how attached I got.

These past couple of days have been amazing, and I hate that it’s ending. I want more time with him. We need more time to figure out what this thing is between us because we never actually got around to talking about that.

We drive down the road in the direction that I had been walking that night when I first showed up on his porch, and I see that I was right. If I had just kept walking, I would have found the main road and been fine.

I’m glad that I didn’t.

Because if I had kept walking, I might never have met Baz. Even if all of this ends when I get out of his car, it will all have been worth it. I wouldn’t give up these few moments with him because they’re some of the best moments of my life.

When we pull up in front of my dorm, I’m reluctant to get out of the car. I don’t want any of this to end.

He gave me his number before we left his house, hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, but that doesn’t mean that we’ll keep in touch. Maybe he felt obligated to give it to me after everything that we did. I don’t want to be someone that he feels like he _has_ to be with. I want him to be with me by choice.

I turn to tell him that, or something similar to it, but he turns to me at the same time and pulls me into a kiss that steals my breath away.

“Text me, okay?” He whispers, and I can see in his eyes how he feels. It’s the same look that I’ve spent all day trying to hide from him. Maybe there’s hope for us after all.

“Okay,” I say nodding.

Then, I get out of his car and walk into my dorm, pausing briefly at the entrance to glance back at him. He smiles at me, and I return it quickly before turning away and stepping inside.

I’m still a little dazed from the events of the past few days, so when I get up to my room, I almost don’t register the fact that there’s someone already in there. It takes her clearing her throat for me to notice her standing by the window.

“Penny,” I say, trying not to sound guilty as well as surprised.

I didn’t expect her to be here. I thought that I would have more time to figure out how to tell her where I’ve been.

“Who was that?” She demands before I even get the door shut behind me.

“A friend?” I say, but it comes out as a question.

“I thought I knew all of your friends.” She says it almost like an accusation, like I’ve been hiding my friends from her.

“He’s a new friend.”

“Where did you meet him?”

I expected an interrogation from Penny when I saw her again. I just thought that it would be more about where I’ve been instead of about the boy who I spent the weekend getting to know.

“Simon?” She prompts when I don’t immediately respond. “Does he have anything to do with why you disappeared Friday night and haven’t texted me?”

“Kind of, but only because he let me stay with him.”

“You spent the weekend with a complete stranger?”

“Yes?” But he’s not a stranger anymore, I want to say.

“Why were you kissing him?” She asks, moving closer to me. “And are those _hickeys_ on your neck?”

She leans in to get a better look, and I reach my hand up to try to cover the marks that I know are there. I didn’t think she’d be in my room. I thought that I’d have more time to find a way to hide them. If I had hoped to hide all of this from her, that hope is now gone.

“I…” I thought I’d have a little more time to figure out what I was going to say to her, too.

“And is that a new shirt? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wear it before.”

I pull at the hem of the black t-shirt that Baz loaned me before we left his house. It’s a bit faded, like he wears it a lot, and there’s a just barely visible design on the front. It’s a red outline of a dragon. It looks like there used to be words underneath it, but they’re indiscernible now.

“It–It’s his,” I admit, knowing that there’s no way that I’m going to be able to keep much from her now.

“Start from the beginning,” she says softly once she manages to stop looking so surprised. She turns to sit at my desk, waiting for me to talk. I sit across from her on my bed, and I tell her everything that happened.

Well, not everything. I leave out the part about how close I got to sleeping with a complete stranger and the part where I thought that he was going to kill me most of the time that I was there and I did all of it anyway. She doesn’t need to know any of those details.

I do tell her how I felt a pull towards him and how we spent a lot of time getting to know each other. I even tell her that I feel differently about him than I have other people, which wins me a soft smile from her.

“So, he’s your boyfriend then?” Is the first thing she asks when I’m done talking.

“I…I’m not sure. We didn’t really talk about it.”

“Do you want to be?”

I shrug, unable to admit that yes, I really do want that because what if he doesn’t?

“Do you have any way to contact him?”

“He gave me his number.”

“So, call him,” she says. “Or text him.”

“My phone is dead.”

She sighs, exasperated. “Then, plug it in.”

“Do I have to text him right now?” I ask.

“Do you not want to text him?”

I do, but now that I’m not sitting right next to him, sure that there is something real between us, I’m worried about what will happen now that we’re apart. What if time away from me has made him realize that he doesn’t actually like me? What if it was all just a bit of fun?

“You really like him.” It’s a statement, not a question, but I answer it anyway.

“Yes,” I admit because I do. I barely know him, but I already know that not being with him will hurt. I want something more than just a few days together. I want a relationship, and I know that he said he wanted more time together. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that he wants something more than what we were already doing, which was just physical.

“Then, you should talk to him,” she urges softly. “It’s better to find out and know than to sit here and wonder.

“Okay,” I say, nodding. She’s right.

“Do you want me to go?”

I hesitate for just a moment. “Actually, will you stay? Just in case…” But I don’t finish because I don’t want to think about him rejecting me unless it happens.

“Of course.”

I smile gratefully at her before moving to plug in my phone. We sit quietly for a bit as I wait for it to come back on. I pull the scrap of paper out of my pocket and smooth it out, my eyes wandering over his neat script. Then, I type in the number, saving it in my phone before finally sending him a text.

_I need to know what we are. - Simon Snow_

I don’t even bother with a greeting, and I almost forget to add my name so that he’ll know that it’s me. I know that this probably isn’t a good conversation to have over text, but I need to know now. Otherwise, I might go crazy.

_What do you mean?_ His response comes only a few seconds later.

_What is this thing between us? Is it purely physical, or is it more than that?_

My phone rings in my hand while I wait for him to respond. His name pops up, and my hands shake as I accept the call.

“Hello?”

“Hey,” his smooth, familiar voice responds. “I thought we already talked about that.”

I glance at Penny, who is still sitting across from me, but at least she is pretending not to listen as she flips through a book that she probably just grabbed off of my desk.

“I mean, I know that you said that you wanted to spend more time together, but I… I want more than just something physical.” I see Penelope’s eyebrows raise, and my cheeks warm.

“I do want to spend time together, but I want it to be a relationship. I want to be your boyfriend. I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear.”

“Oh, I—. I guess I misunderstood.”

Penny looks up then, a concerned expression etched into her face. I smile at her to try to let her know that it’s a good thing, and she just nods once before looking back down at the book.

“So, we’re good?” He asks, and I almost think I imagine the uncertainty in his voice.

“Yeah, we’re good.” A smile pulls at the corner of my mouth.

“Do you want to get dinner with me tomorrow?”

“Yes,” I say immediately, laughing a little, nervously. “I’d love to.”

“Great. I’ll pick you up at 6.”

“Okay, see you then.”

“Bye, Snow.” He says, and I can hear the smile in his voice as he chooses to call me that. He hangs up before I can correct him, though.

“So?” Penny asks when I set my phone back down.

“Soo, I have a boyfriend.” I can’t keep the grin off of my face.

“When do I get to meet him?”

“Uh, I’m not sure.”

“Simon, I’m okay with you dating whoever you want, but I would like to at least meet them first.”

“And if you don’t approve?” I ask, worrying my bottom lip between my teeth. Her opinion means a lot to me, but I don’t want Baz to be something that comes between us.

“It doesn’t matter what I think. The only thing that matters is that he knows that if he were to hurt you, I’ll be there to make him sorry.”

I smile at her, glad that I have such a good best friend.

“He wants to go out for dinner tomorrow night,” I tell her.

“So soon?”

“Yes.”

She hums her approval.

“You can come by and meet him before we go if you want.”

“Great.”

***

After making sure that I am in fact okay, Penny leaves me to go back to her own dorm.

Once she’s gone, I can’t seem to sit still, my mind constantly wandering back to Baz, and I finally give up and decide to go shower and change into some of my own clothes. I grab some worn jeans, one of my favorite pairs, but instead of picking up one of my own shirts, I decide to put back on the one that I’m wearing. Baz’s shirt, faint with his scent and whatever laundry detergent he uses. I’ll have to remember to return it to him, but for now, I can continue to wear it.

After I’ve showered and dressed, I don’t want to go back to my room, even though I have a bunch of homework that has piled up. Even if I were to sit down with my textbooks, I know that I wouldn’t be able to focus on it. My mind keeps drifting to grey eyes and soft lips, turned up in a tentative smile.

I grab my phone from my room, only somewhat charged now, and I head outside. Everything is wet and slightly muddy from the rain of the past two days.

There aren’t many people out right now, and I find it peaceful in a way that I wouldn’t usually find the complete silence and loneliness. I decide that I’ll take a walk around campus to clear my mind before going and getting dinner and then returning to my room for an evening of homework.

I’ve nearly made the complete circle around campus when I see him.

Baz is walking towards me, and I freeze for a moment. Then, he looks up, and when he sees me standing there, the corners of his mouth turn up.

“Hey,” I breathe quietly as he moves closer to me.

“Hey.”

How is it that we manage to run into each other now when we never even saw each other before Friday? Maybe I just never noticed him before, but I find that doubtful.

He’s wearing the same outfit I saw him in barely more than an hour ago, but he’s thrown on a jacket over it to keep out the chill of the wind.

“You’re wearing my shirt,” he observes.

I look down at it and blush. I hadn’t expected him to see me in it.

“It looks good on you,” he whispers, and I look back up at him wide-eyed.

He’s smiling that soft smile that’s becoming so familiar to me now.

“Thanks,” I murmur, unsure how else to respond.

“What are you doing out here?” He asks conversationally.

I shrug. “Just walking. I was about to head to the dining hall.”

“Would you like to come to my place for food?”

“Um…” It was one thing being in his house where it was just us. It’s another thing to be in his apartment where all of his personal effects are and a couple of roommates that I might have to talk to. Has he told them about me like I told Penny about him? It makes me curious about what exactly he might have said.

“I promise that I have more than eggs and lunch meat in my fridge there. And my roommates aren’t home right now. They went out somewhere together.”

Having his apartment to ourselves makes me more nervous than the idea of meeting his roommates for some reason.

“I should really be studying,” I begin, but then I see his face fall into a look of disappointment for a brief moment before he manages to school his features again. “But I suppose that I can spare an hour to hang out with you.”

The small smile widens, lighting up his face, and I know that I’ve made the right decision. I turn to walk beside him, and he leads me to his apartment building.

We end up sitting on his couch, eating and watching tv, for far longer than I intended to stay. We spend most of the time actually talking instead of messing around with each other, and I find that it’s nice to just hang out with him, without the worry that I felt during the time that we were at his family’s house. This thing between us may be new and came on rather quickly, but I have a feeling that it will be something that lasts.

I’m ready for whatever fate may have in store for us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!! <3


End file.
